Boccaccio’s Anger

John Freccero Lecture Series
Boccaccio’s Anger
A Case in the Philology and Politics of Emotions

A lecture by
Gur Zak, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

In ENGLISH

Gur Zak is an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Romance Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he also serves as the Head of the Institute of Literatures. His primary research interest lies in the interrelations between literature, ethics, and the emotions in the later Middle Ages and the Italian Renaissance, with a particular emphasis on Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. He is the author of Petrarch’s Humanism and the Care of the Self (Cambridge, 2010) and Boccaccio and the Consolation of Literature (PIMS, 2022). His current research deals with the literary, philosophical, and political implications of compassion in the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance, from Dante to Tasso. He has published articles in journals such as Speculum, MLN, and I Tatti Studies, and has contributed to The Cambridge Companion to Petrarch, The Cambridge Companion to Boccaccio, and The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Latin Literature. He is also interested in the theory and practice of autobiography from antiquity to the present and contemporary theories of affects.

The John Freccero Lecture Series, co-sponsored and co-organized by NYU’s Department of Italian Studies and Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, honors the memory of Professor John Freccero, one of the most influential figures in the field of Italian Studies. A world-renowned scholar of Dante, among other subjects, Professor Freccero, after teaching at Johns Hopkins University, Cornell University, Yale University, and Stanford University, was Professor of Italian Studies at New York University from 1992 to 2015, where his intellectual and educational vision was instrumental in the founding and growth of our Department of Italian Studies. The John Freccero Lecture Series is supported by a generous gift from Dr. Thomas Bellezza and Mr. John Jensen.