Prof. Em. Anthony Mortimer

Contact: anthony.mortimer(at)unifr.ch

 

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 are in Renaissance poetry, Anglo-Italian literary relations and the craft of verse translation.  He retired in 2006 and now lives in Geneva.

 

Publications

Books
  • Modern Engish Poets: Five Introductory Essays, Milan: Cisalpino, 1966. [Essays on Hopkins, Yeats,  Owen, Eliot, Auden, with notes on Dylan Thomas and Robert Graves]. Second edition, Toronto: Forum House, 1968.
  • Petrarch's Canzoniere in the English Renaissance, Milan and Bergamo: Minerva Italica, 1975.
  • Petrarch: Selected Poems, translated, with introduction and notes, Tuscaloosa: Alabama University Press, 1977.
  • 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 A.M.]
  • Variable Passions: A Reading of Shakespeare's 'Venus and Adonis', New York: AMS Press, 2000. AMS Studies in the Renaissance 36.
  • Petrarch, Canzoniere, Selected Poems, translated with introduction and notes, London: Penguin, Penguin Classics, 2002. [Revised and enlarged edition of 4, Petrarch: Selected Poems]
  • Petrarch's Canzoniere in the English Renaissance, Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2005. Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft 88. [Revised and enlarged edition of 3]
  • From Wordsworth to Stevens: Essays in Honour of Robert Rehder, edited by Anthony Mortimer, Bern and New York: Peter Lang, 2005.
  • Michelangelo: Poems and Letters, Selections, with the 1550 Vasari Life, translated with introduction and notes,  London: Penguin, Penguin Classics, 2007.
  • Cecco Angiolieri : Sonnets, translated by C. H. Scott and Anthony Mortimer, Richmond: Oneworld Classics,  Alma, 2008.
  • Dante Alighieri: Rime, translated by J. G. Nichols and Anthony Mortimer, Richmond: Oneworld Classics, Alma, 2009.
  • Guido Cavalcanti: Complete Poems, translated by Anthony Mortimer, Richmond:  Oneworld Classics, Alma, 2010.
  • Dante Alighieri: Vita Nuova, translated by Anthony Mortimer, Richmond: Oneworld Classics, Alma, 2011.   Reissued as Alma Classic, 2014.
  • Angelus Silesius: Sacred Epigrams from “The Cherubinic Pilgrim”,  translated, with introduction and notes, by Anthony Mortimer, New York, AMS Press, 2013.  AMS Studies in the Seventeenth Century 6.
  • François Villon : The Testament and other Poems, translated by Anthony Mortimer,  Richmond:  Alma Classics, 2013.
  • Love Poems of Dante, translated by Anthony Mortimer and J. G. Nichols, Richmond: Alma Classics, 2014.
  • 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:  Oxford World’s Classics,  Oxford University Press, 2014.
  • Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil, translated by Anthony Mortimer, Richmond: Alma Classics, 2015.
  • The Song of Roland, a verse translation, Alma Classics, 2019.

  • Italian Renaissance Tales, selected and translated with an introduction and notes by Anthony Mortimer, Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, Oxford University Press, 2019.

Forthcoming

  • Du Bellay and Ronsard; Selected Poems, translated with Introduction and Notes, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022

 

Selected Articles

  • “The Italian Influence on Milton's Comus”, Milton Quarterly 6 (1972)

  • “The Feigned Commonwealth in the Poetry of Ben Jonson”, SEL 13 (1973).

  • “The Early Regional Novel: Notes towards a Definition”,  Anglistentag 1980 Giessen: Tagungsbeiträge und Berichte im Auftrage des Verstandes, ed Herbert Grabes, Grossen Linden, 1981.

  • “Castle Rackrent and its Historical Contexts”, Etudes Irlandaises 9, nouvelle série (1984), 107-23.

  • “Comus and Michaelmas”, English Studies 65 (1984).

  • “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).

  • “Hythlodaeus and Persona More: the Narrative Voices of Utopia”, Cahiers Elisabéthains 28 (1985).

  • “ ‘The Manner of Cervantes’: Some Notes on Joseph Andrews and Don Quixote”, Colloquium Helveticum 16 (1992).

  • “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.

  • “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). 

  • “Reading with the Ears:  Performing the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins”,  Il confronto letterario 37 (2002)

  • “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.

  • “Shakespeare’s Critique of Calvinism : A New Context for Sonnet 94”,  Tragédie et lyrisme: mélanges en l'honneur de John Jackson, eds. Dagmar Wieser and Patrick Labarthe,  Paris: Champion, 2008.

  • “The Translation of Walter Scott’s Waverley  in the Bibliothèque Britannique”,  Geneva: An English Enclave, ed. Valerie Cossy, Béla Kapossy and Richard Whatmore, Geneva: Slatkine, 2009.

  • “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.

  • “Shakespeare and Italian Poetry”,   The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare’s Poetry, ed Jonathan Post, Oxford , Oxford University Press, 2013.

  • "Quelques remarques sur Shakespeare et le pétrarquisme", Shakespeare et quelques autres, ed. Yves Bonnefoy and Odile Bombarde, Paris: Hermann, Fondation Hugot du Collège de France, 2017.

  • "Baudelaire en anglais: les enjeux d'une traduction", Baudelaire et ses autres, ed. Patrick Labarthe, Geneva: Droz, 2021.