Gianfranco Contini (1912-1990) was one of the foremost literary critics and Romance philologists of 20th century Italy, whose academic career allowed him to shine as well as a lecturer at the Universities of Freiburg and Florence and the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. But he is perhaps best known as the scholar whose extensive comparative research and textual analysis has contributed largely to our contemporary understanding of the writings of Dante, methods which also informed his vital engagement with the principal Italian authors of his time, from Montale and Svevo to Pasolini and Gadda.
