Romand Langugages building at UO
Romance Languages
Portrait of Gina Psaki

Gina Psaki

Professor Emerita of Italian
Professor, Romance Languages
Comparative Literature, Medieval Studies, Romance Languages
rpsaki@uoregon.edu
Phone: 541-346-4042
Office: 224 Friendly Hall, 1233 University Of Oregon, Eugene OR 97403-1233
Research Interests: Italian and French literature of the Middle Ages; comparative medieval literature; medieval lyric and romance; Dante; Boccaccio; translation; medieval feminist scholarship; discourse analysis; metadisciplinary issues in medieval literary study; history of

Education

Ph.D., Medieval Studies, Cornell University, 1989;

M.A., Medieval Studies, Cornell University, 1986;

B.A., 18th- and 19th-c. Studies (independent major), Dickinson College, 1980.

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Research

Having done a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies, I divide my research about equally between Italian and French literature of the Middle Ages and medieval feminist scholarship. In Italian I focus on Dante’s Comedy, including topics such as the role and nature of his love for Beatrice, and the way different translations inflect how English-language readers interpret Dante. Boccaccio is another focus, with projects in progress on both his Decameron and Corbaccio. In both languages I work on chivalric romance, particularly the Roman de Silence, the Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole, and the Tristano Riccardiano. A current project in both French and Italian is "The Traffic in Talk About Women: Misogyny and Philogyny in the Middle Ages", a study of non-fiction writings in praise and blame of women. Overall I tend to privilege questions of alterity and continuity between medieval and modern; textual transmission and context; translation of / and medieval material; and metadisciplinary issues in medieval literary study.

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Publications

• “Medieval Misogyny and the French of Italy: The Chastiemusart and the Proverbia que dicuntur super natura feminarum.” Medieval French Literary Culture Outside France: Studies in the Moving Word, eds. Dirk Schoenaers and Nicola Morato. Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 28. Turnhout: Brepols, 2019. 101–139.

• “Misogyny, Philogyny, Masculinities: Antonio Pucci’s Il Contrasto delle donne.” Rivalrous Masculinities: New Directions in Medieval Masculinity and Gender Studies, eds. Ann Marie Rasmussen and Christian Straubhar. University of Notre Dame Press, 2019. 102–130.

• “Teaching Dante, Beatrice, and ‘Courtly Love’ in the Divine Comedy.” For Approaches to Teaching Dante’s Comedy, eds. Christopher Kleinhenz and Kristina Olson, MLA Approaches to Teaching Series. Spring 2019.

• “Compassion in the Later Boccaccio: The Opening Sequence.” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance, Fall 2019. 10,400 words.

• “Voicing Gender in the Decameron.” The Cambridge Companion to Boccaccio, ed. Guyda Armstrong, Rhiannon Daniels, and Stephen Milner. Cambridge University Press, 2015. 101–117.

• The Arthur of the Italians, co-edited with Gloria Allaire. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2014; paperback edition, spring 2017.

• "'Alcuna paroletta più liberale': Contemporary Women Authors Address the Decameron's Obscenity." Medievalia, 34 (2013), 241–66.

• “Giving Them the Bird: Figurative Language and the ‘Woman Question’ in the Decameron and the Corbaccio.” Studi sul Boccaccio, XLI (2013), 207–37.

• “The One and the Many: The Tale of the Brigata and Decameron Day Four.” Annali d’Italianistica, 31 (2013): Boccaccio’s Decameron: Rewriting the Christian Middle Ages, ed. Dino Cervigni. 217–56.

• “‘Women Make All Things Lose Their Power’: Women’s Knowledge, Men’s Fear in the Decameron and the Corbaccio.” Reprinted in Heliotropia 700/10: A Boccaccio Anniversary Volume, ed. Michael Papio. Milan: LED, 2013. 179­–90.

• “Dante and the Contemptus Mundi Tradition.” ‘Legato con amore in un volume’: Essays in Honour of John A. Scott, eds. John J. Kinder and Diana Glenn. Florence: Olschki, 2012. 87–104.

• “The Book’s Two Fathers: Marco Polo, Rustichello, and Le Devisement dou Monde.” Medievalia, 32 (2011), 69–97.

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