Prof. Em. Anthony Mortimer † (1936-2025)
Bio
Anthony Mortimer obtained his BA from the University of Leeds (UK) and his Ph.D from Case Western Reserve University (USA). He taught at universities in Croatia, Italy, the United States and Germany before coming to Switzerland as assistant professor of English at the University of Geneva. In 1978 he succeeded Max Nänny as professor of English Literature at the University of Fribourg where he later served both as Director of the English Department and as Dean of the Faculty of Letters. In 1994-95 he was Visiting Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford. His major interests were in Renaissance poetry, Anglo-Italian literary relations and the craft of verse translation. He retired in 2006 and subsequently dedicated much of his time to translation. Between his retirement and his death in 2025, he published fourteen volumes of English translations from Dante, Petrarch, Michelangelo, Angelus Silesius, François Villon, Charles Baudelaire, and others.
Publications
Books
1) Modern English Poets: Five Introductory Essays, Milan: Cisalpino, 1966; 2nd edn, Toronto: Forum House, 1968. [Essays on Hopkins, Yeats, Owen, Eliot, Auden, with notes on Dylan Thomas and Robert Graves]
2) Petrarch’s Canzoniere in the English Renaissance, Milan and Bergamo: Minerva Italica, 1975, 2nd edn, revised and enlarged, Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft 88. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2005.
3) The Authentic Cadence: Centennial Essays on Gerard Manley Hopkins, edited by Anthony Mortimer. Fribourg: Fribourg University Press, 1992. SEGES 10. [Contains essays by Helen Vendler, Brian Vickers, Robert Rehder, R. K. R. Thornton, Balz Engler, Donatella Abbate Badin and Anthony Mortimer]
4) Variable Passions: A Reading of Shakespeare’s ‘Venus and Adonis’, AMS Studies in the Renaissance 36, New York: AMS Press, 2000.
5) Petrarch: Canzoniere, Selected Poems, translated with introduction and notes, Penguin Classics, London: Penguin, 2002. [Revised and enlarged edition of Petrarch: Selected Poems, Tuscaloosa: Alabama University Press, 1977.]
6) From Wordsworth to Stevens: Essays in Honour of Robert Rehder, edited by Anthony Mortimer, Bern and New York: Peter Lang, 2005.
7) Michelangelo: Poems and Letters, Selections, with the 1550 Vasari Life, translated with introduction and notes, Penguin Classics, London: Penguin, 2007.
8) Cecco Angiolieri: Sonnets, translated by C. H. Scott and Anthony Mortimer, Richmond: Oneworld Classics, Alma, 2008.
9) Dante Alighieri: Rime, translated by J. G. Nichols and Anthony Mortimer, Richmond: Oneworld Classics, Alma, 2009.
10) Guido Cavalcanti: Complete Poems, translated by Anthony Mortimer, Richmond: Oneworld Classics, Alma, 2010.
11) Dante Alighieri: Vita Nuova, translated by Anthony Mortimer, Richmond: Oneworld Classics, Alma, 2011. Reissued as Alma Classic, 2014.
12) Angelus Silesius: Sacred Epigrams from ‘The Cherubinic Pilgrim’, translated, with introduction and notes, by Anthony Mortimer, AMS Studies in the Seventeenth Century 6, New York: AMS Press, 2013.
13) François Villon: The Testament and other Poems, translated by Anthony Mortimer, Richmond: Alma Classics, 2013.
14) Love Poems of Dante, translated by Anthony Mortimer and J. G. Nichols, Richmond: Alma Classics, 2014.
15) Luigi Pirandello: Three Plays [Six Characters in Search of an Audience, Henry IV, The Mountain Giants], translated with Introduction and Notes by Anthony Mortimer, Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
16) Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil, translated by Anthony Mortimer, Richmond: Alma Classics, 2016.
17) Italian Renaissance Tales, translated by Anthony Mortimer, Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
18) The Song of Roland, translated by Anthony Mortimer, Richmond: Alma Classics, 2019.
19) Du Bellay and Ronsard: Selected Poems, translated by Anthony Mortimer, Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023.
20) Conrad Ferdinand Meyer: Footprints, poems selected and translated by Anthony Mortimer, Richmond: Alma Classics, forthcoming, November 2025.
Selected Articles
1) “The Italian Influence on Comus”, Milton Quarterly 6 (1972), 8-16.
2) “The Feigned Commonwealth in the Poetry of Ben Jonson”, Studies in English Literature 13 (1973), 69-79.
3) “The Early Regional Novel: Notes towards a Definition”, Anglistentag 1980 Giessen: Tagungsbeiträge und Berichte im Auftrage des Verstandes, ed. Herbert Grabes (Grossen Linden: Hoffmann, 1981), 211-25.
4) “Castle Rackrent and its Historical Contexts”, Etudes Irlandaises 9, nouvelle série (1984), 107-23.
5) “Comus and Michaelmas”, English Studies 65 (1984), 111-19.
6) “Il romanzo storico in Europa: il caso inglese”: Nuova Secondaria (Brescia) 9 (1984).
7) “Words in the Mouth of God: Augustinian Language-Theory and the Poetics of George Herbert”, On Poetry and Poetics, ed. Richard Waswo, Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 2 (1985), 31-44.
8) “Hythlodaeus and Persona More: The Narrative Voices of Utopia”, Cahiers Elisabéthains 28 (1985), 23-35.
9) “‘The Manner of Cervantes’: Some Notes on Joseph Andrews and Don Quixote”, Colloquium Helveticum 16 (1992), 69-83.
10) “Hopkins: The Stress and the Self”, The Authentic Cadence: Centennial Essays on Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. Anthony Mortimer (Fribourg: Fribourg University Press, 1992), 1-34.
11) “Théologie et démarche poétique: George Herbert et Gerard Manley Hopkins”, Les lettres et le sacré: littérature, histoire et théologie, ed. Guy Bedouelle (Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1994), 28-56.
12) “Reading with the Ears: Performing the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins”, Il confronto letterario 37 (2002), 159-69.
13) “Wordsworth as a Translator from Italian”, From Wordsworth to Stevens: Essays in Honour of Robert Rehder, ed. Anthony Mortimer (Bern and New York: Peter Lang, 2005), 71-88.
14) “Shakespeare’s Critique of Calvinism: A New Context for Sonnet 94”, Mémoire et oubli dans le lyrisme européen: Hommage à John E. Jackson, eds. Dagmar Wieser and Patrick Labarthe (Paris: Champion, 2008).
15) “The Translation of Walter Scott’s Waverley in the Bibliothèque Britannique”, Genève, lieu d’Angleterre, 1725-1814: Geneva, an English Enclave, ed. Valerie Cossy, Béla Kapossy, and Richard Whatmore (Geneva: Slatkine, 2009), 281-92.
16) “Domesticating the Devil: Cromwell and His Elegists”, After Satan: Essays in Honour of Neil Forsyth, ed. Kirsten Stirling and Martine Hennard Dutheil de la Rochère (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), 46-67.
17) “Shakespeare and Italian Poetry”, The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare’s Poetry, ed. Jonathan Post (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 116-33.
18) “Quelques remarques sur Shakespeare et le pétrarquisme”, Shakespeare et quelques autres, ed. Yves Bonnefoy and Odile Bombarde (Paris: Hermann, 2017), 27-47.
19) “Baudelaire en anglais: les enjeux d’une traduction”, Baudelaire et ses autres, ed. Patrick Labarthe (Geneva: Droz, 2023), 503-28.
20) “Selected Poems by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer”, Translation and Literature, 32.1 (2023), 56-85.