Anne Paolucci

Anne Paolucci (July 31, 1926 – July 15, 2012) was an Italian-American writer, scholar, and educator. She was a research professor and chair of the English Department at St. John's University in New York City, and a prolific writer who published plays, short stories, novels, poetry, literary criticism, and translations.

Biography

Early life and education

She was born on July 31, 1926, in Rome, Italy. At the age of eight, she moved to New York City with her widowed mother and two siblings. She attended Barnard College, graduating with a B.A. in English in 1947. She studied Italian literature under Giuseppe Prezzolini and Dino Bigongiari at Columbia University, receiving her M.A. in 1950. She spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Naples Federico II. Her doctoral dissertation on The Women in Dante's Divine Comedy and Spenser's Faerie Queene earned her a Woodbridge Honorary Fellowship, and she received a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Columbia in 1963.

Career Paolucci taught at the City University of New York before joining the faculty of St. John's University in 1969, as the university's first research professor. She chaired the English department for ten years, and in 1982, became director of the doctor of arts degree program in English.

Works

Author The Short Season (1966) From Tension to Tonic: The Plays of Edward Albee (1972) Pirandello's Theater: The Recovery of the Modern Stage for Dramatic Art (1974) Riding the Mast Where it Swings: Poems (1980) Cipango! A Brief Historical Account of the Dramatic Reversals in the Life of Christopher Columbus (1987) Do Me a Favor and Other Short Stories (2001) Hegelian Literary Perspectives (2002) In Wolf's Clothing: A Mystery Novel (2003) Slow Dance to Samarra: A Mystery Novel (2005) The Plays and Fiction of Luigi Pirandello: Selected Essays (2005) The Women in Dante's Divine Comedy and Spenser's Faerie Queene (2005) Dante Revisited: Essays (2008)

Translator Mandragola by Niccolò Machiavelli (1957) Selected Poems by Giacomo Leopardi (2003)

Editor or contributor Hegel on Tragedy by Georg Hegel (2001) Dante's Gallery of Rogues: Paintings of Dante's Inferno by Vincenzo R. Latella (2001) Dante: Beyond the Commedia (2004) Backgrounds of the Divine Comedy: A Series of Lectures by Dino Bigongiari (2005) Review of National Literatures: Selected Essays (1970-2001) (2006) Readings in the Divine Comedy: A Series of Lectures by Dino Bigongiari (2006) Italian-American Perspectives with Ann Merlino (2007)