Deborah Parker


DEBORAH PARKER is Professor of Italian. She holds a BA from the University of Toronto (1976) and an MA and PhD from Harvard (1985).
She is the author of Commentary and Ideology: Dante in the Renaissance (Duke University Press, 1992) and Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet (Cambridge University Press, 2000). She has authored more than thirty articles on Umberto Eco, Dante, Renaissance printing practices, medieval and Renaissance commentaries, and artist-poets of the Renaissance.
Professor Parker is the general editor of The World of Dante.
Special interests include artistic and literary interrelations in the Renaissance, Medicean Florence, Dante, and digital humanities computing. She is currently working on a book-length study of Michelangelo's letters.

Books:

  • Agnolo Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
  • Commentary and Ideology: Dante in the Renaissance (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993).
  • Visibile parlare: Dante and the Art of the Italian Renaissance, Special Edition of Lectura Dantis, (1998).
Hypermedia Projects: Articles:
  • "The Role of Letters in Biographies of Michelangelo," Renaissance Quarterly 58 (2005):91-126.
  • "Bronzino and the Diligence of Art," Artibus et Historiae 49 (2004):1-14.
  • "Directors and DVD Commentary: The Specifics of Intention," co-authored with Mark Parker, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62 (2004):13-22. Reprinted in The Philosophy of Film: Introductory Text and Readings (Blackwells: Oxford, 2005).
  • "Poetry of Patronage: Bronzino and the Medici," Renaissance Studies 17 (2003):230-245.
  • "Italian Renaissance Art," Review article of Grove Encyclopedia of Italian Renaissance & Mannerist Art in Virginia Quarterly Review 78 (2002):175-77.
  • "Dante giocoso: Bronzino’s Burlesque Transformations of the Commedia," Quaderni d’Italianistica 22 (2001):77-101.
  • "Edizioni e interpretazioni della Commedia nel Rinascimento," in Pour Dante. Dante et l’Apocalypse. Lectures Humanistes de Dante, ed. Bruno Pinchard (Paris, Honoré Champion, 2001), 295-303.
  • "The World of Dante: A Hypermedia Archive for the Study of the Inferno," Literary and Linguistic Computing 16 (2001):287-297.
  • "A Visibile Literary History: Giorgio Vasari’s Portrait of Six Tuscan Poets," in Visibile Parlare: Dante and the Art of the Italian Renaissance, Special Issue of Lectura Dantis 22-23 (1998):45-62
  • "Il libro come forma espressiva: La stampa della Commedia nel Rinascimento," in Studies for Dante: Essays in Honor of Dante Della Terza (Rome: Cadmo, 1998):135-143.
  • "Toward a Reading of Bronzino's Poetry," Renaissance Quarterly 50 (1997):1011-1044.
  • "Interpreting the Commentary Tradition to Dante's Comedy," in Dante, Ed. Amilcare Iannucci (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997).
  • "Women in the Book Trade in Italy, 1475-1620," Renaissance Quarterly 49 (1996):509-541.
  • "Dante's Medieval and Renaissance Commentators: Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Interpretations," in Dante and the Middle Age, ed. John Barnes (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1995.)
  • "Le donne e la stampa nel Quattrocento toscano," in Ilaria del Caretto e il suo monumento: La donna nell'arte, la cultura e la società del '400, ed. Stéphane Toussaint (Lucca: Edizioni S. Marco Litotipo, 1995).
  • "Ideology and Cultural Practice: The Case of Dante's Treatment of Beatrice d'Este," Dante Studies 111 (1993):131-147.
  • "Umberto Eco," in Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, ed. Michael Groden and Martin Krieswirth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993).
  • "Commentary as Social Act: Trifone Gabriele's Critique of Landino," Renaissance Quarterly 45 (1992):225-247.
  • "The Literature of Appropriation: Eco's Use of Borges in Il nome della rosa," Modern Language Review 85 (1990):842-849. Reprinted in Umberto Eco, ed. Gage and Gane (Sage Publications, 2005).
  • "Narration as Practice in Il nome della rosa," Quaderni d'italianistica 11 (1990):215-24.
  • "Beyond Plagiarism: New Perspectives on Bernardino Daniello's Debt to Trifone Gabriele," Modern Language Notes 104 (1989):208-18.
  • "Bernardino Daniello and the Commentary Tradition," Dante Studies 106 1988):111-121.
  • "Answering Idle Questions: Open and Closed Readers in The Name of the Rose," in Anatomy of a Bestseller: The Name of the Rose, ed. M. Thomas Inge (Oxford, MI: Univ. of Mississippi Press, 1988), 146-156.
  • "Lectura Dantis: Inferno X," Lectura Dantis 1 (1987): 37-47.
  • "The Trecento Commentators' Interpretation of Exile in the Commedia," Carte italiane 6 (1984-85):19-34.


Deborah Parker
University of Virginia
dwp7k@virginia.edu