Academic & Teaching staff

Professor Claire Honess

Professor of Italian Studies/Head of School

Professor Claire Honess

+44 (0) 113 343 3631

Biography

I graduated in 1989 with a degree in Italian and French from the University of Reading. I went on to do a PhD on the image of the city in Dante's writing, and Dante is still my main area of research interest. My book, From Florence to the Heavenly City: The Poetry of Citizenship in Dante, appeared in 2006; I have a continuing interest in medieval political poetry and, in particular, in the way in which Dante uses political ideas and imagery.  I have recently translated four of Dante's Latin letters on political themes into English.  I have also written on modern Italian authors, most notably Elio Vittorini, and I teach modules on modern literature (in particular, the works of Primo Levi and writers from Trieste).   I am an editor of the journal The Italianist and of a book on Italy's religious minorities, and I also have an interest in the teaching of reading skills in Italian.  I taught at the University of Reading and at Royal Holloway, University of London, before coming to Leeds in August 2003.

Teaching

Level Module
Level 2 Introduction to Dante (Inferno)
Level 3 Dante, Purgatorio and Paradiso
Level 3 Primo Levi: From Testimony to Fiction
Level 3 Translation into English
Level M MA in Applied Interpreting and Translation Studies

Research and selected publications

Monograph

  • From Florence to the Heavenly City: The Poetry of Citizenship in Dante (Oxford: Legenda, 2006)

Translation

  • Dante Alighieri, Four Political Letters, translated with an introduction and commentary by Claire E. Honess (Critical Texts, vol. 6) (London: MHRA, 2007)

Claire Honess has published a new translation of Dante's political letters, which the poet wrote in exile from Florence and against the background of the factional conflicts of the early fourteenth century. The first book to bring the letters together with a full and wide-ranging introduction, it makes these impassioned and sophisticated pieces of writing available to a new audience.

Edited Volume

  • (ed. with Verina R. Jones) Donne delle minoranze: Le ebree e le protestanti d'Italia (Turin: Claudiana, 1999)

Articles

  • 'Communication and Participation in Dante's Commedia', in In amicizia: Essays in Honour of Giulio Lepschy, ed. by Z. G. Baranski and L. Pertile, Supplement to The Italianist, 17 (1997), 127-45
  • 'Feminine Virtues and Florentine Vices: Citizenship and Morality in Paradiso XV-XVII', in Dante and Government, ed. by J. R. Woodhouse (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 102-20
  • 'Dante and Political Poetry in the Vernacular', Journal of the Institute of Romance Studies, 6 (1998), 21-42; also in Dante and his Literary Precursors, edited by J. C. Barnes and J. Petrie (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), pp. 117-51
  • 'Learning to read: literary texts and ab initio students of Italian', in Prospettive sull'Italiano come lingua straniera, edited by A. L. Lepschy & A. R. Tamponi (Perugia: Guerra, 2005), pp. 161-64
  • 'Salus, venus, virtus: Poetry, politics and ethics from the De vulgari eloquentia to the Commedia', The Italianist, 27.ii (2007), 185-205

Conference and seminar organization

Editing work

I am an editor of The Italianist.

Research supervision

I am able to supervise research on: Dante and medieval literature; modern literature, including Triestine writers (Svevo, Tomizza, Vegliani) and Vittorini.