Event Hosted by Professor Justin Weir

Renato Poggioli (April 16, 1907, Florence, Italy – May 3, 1963, Crescent City, CA) was one of the leading Slavicists and Comparatists of his generation. A fervent anti-fascist, he sought refuge in the United States after 1938. At the time of his death, he occupied the Curt Hugo Reisinger Professorship of Slavic and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. A prolific writer and translator, who was fluent in five languages, he was the author and editor of dozens of volumes on topics ranging from Dante to contemporary poetry. Among his major English language publications are The oaten flute : essays on pastoral poetry and the pastoral ideal (1975), The theory of the avant-garde (1968), The Poets of Russia, 1890-1930 (1960), and The Phoenix and the Spider: A Book of Essays about Some Russian Writers and Their View of the Self (1957). Poggioli chaired the department of Comparative Literature between 1952 and 1956, and the Poggioli Lecture Series was founded in his honor.

Sylvia Poggioli, Renato’s daughter, was the senior European correspondent for National Public Radio’s international desk covering political, economic, and cultural news in Italy, the Vatican, Western Europe, and the Balkans. Poggioli’s on-air reporting and analysis have encompassed the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, the turbulent civil war in the former Yugoslavia, and how immigration has transformed European societies. She is currently at work on a biography of her father.

An event in celebration of the 120-year Anniversary of the PhD in Comparative Literature and the 40-year Anniversary of the Undergraduate Literature Concentration.