About Giuseppe Velli

The American Boccaccio Association established this annual award in recognition and appreciation of the scholarship of Giuseppe Velli (1928-2013), an inspiring Boccaccio scholar whose work remains fundamental in Italy and North America to this day. As a young man, he studied at the Scuola Normale di Pisa and elsewhere with the likes of Giorgio Pasquali, Luigi Russo, Alessandro Perosa, Paul Oskar Kristeller, Augusto Campana and Reto Bezzola. Upon the completion of his studies, he spent many years teaching in several different universities: first holding appointments in Paris and New York (1955-59), before taking an assistant professorship at the University of California Los Angeles (1959-64), and later a post as full professor at Smith College (1964-76). Afterwards, he returned to Italy where he taught "Letteratura umanistica" at the Università di Macerata, "Letteratura italiana e filologia dantesca" at the Università di Venezia and lastly as professor of Italian literature at the Università degli Studi di Milano. Beginning in the 1980s, he maintained an important presence in the United States as a visiting scholar at UCLA, Johns Hopkins University, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and Indiana University.

Professor Velli's studies ranged widely, but the ABA is of course particularly appreciative of his studies of Boccaccio. His work, including the edition of the Carmina for Mondadori's "Tutte le opere" series and his famous study entitled Petrarca e Boccaccio. Tradizione · memoria · scrittura (1995), helped enhance our understanding of the patterns of intertextuality between Boccaccio's works and classical literature, the relationship between Boccaccio and Petrarch, and the modus operandi of Boccaccio at his scriptorium.

To read Bio-bibliografic note in memory of Giuseppe Velli by Elsa Filosa click here.