Robert B. Hollander Jr. (July 31, 1933 – April 20, 2021) was an American academic and translator, most widely known for his work on

Dante Alighieri Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His '' Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: ...

and

Giovanni Boccaccio Giovanni Boccaccio (, , ; 16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so well known as a writer that he was som ...

. He was described by a department chair at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the n ...

as "a pioneer in the creation of digital resources for the study of literature" for his work on the electronic Princeton and

Dartmouth Dartmouth may refer to: Places * Dartmouth, Devon, England ** Dartmouth Harbour * Dartmouth, Massachusetts, United States * Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada * Dartmouth, Victoria, Australia Institutions * Dartmouth College, Ivy League university i ...

Dante projects. In 2008, he and his wife,

Jean Hollander Jean may refer to: People * Jean (female given name) * Jean (male given name) * Jean (surname) Fictional characters * Jean Grey, a Marvel Comics character * Jean Valjean, fictional character in novel ''Les Misérables'' and its adaptations * J ...

, co-received a Gold Florin award from the City of Florence for their English translation of Dante's ''

Divine Comedy The ''Divine Comedy'' ( it, Divina Commedia ) is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun 1308 and completed in around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature a ...

''.

Early life and education

Hollander was born in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five Boroughs of New York City, boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the List of co ...

in 1933. His father was a financier and his mother was a nurse. He graduated from Collegiate School in 1951. Hollander received a B.A. in French and English from

in 1955 and a Ph.D from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manha ...

's department of English and Comparative Literature in 1962. His dissertation for the latter was on

Edwin Muir Edwin Muir CBE (15 May 1887 – 3 January 1959) was a Scottish poet, novelist and translator. Born on a farm in Deerness, a parish of Orkney, Scotland, he is remembered for his deeply felt and vivid poetry written in plain language and w ...

Career

Hollander began teaching at Princeton University in 1962, eventually taking

emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

status as a professor in 2003. In 1982, Hollander began working on the Dartmouth Dante Project, a digital collection of over seventy commentaries on the ''Divine Comedy'' dating back to 1322. This was one of the first instances of computer technology being used in literature studies, and encouraged more advances in

digital humanities Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanities, as well as the analy ...

. Forty years later, literature scholar

Jeffrey Schnapp Jeffrey Schnapp is an American university professor who works as a cultural historian, designer, and technologist. Until joining the Harvard University in 2011, he was the director of the Stanford Humanities Lab from its foundation in 1999 throug ...

called the project a "go-to tool." Hollander was elected president of the

Dante Society of America The Dante Society of America is an American academic society devoted to the study of Dante Alighieri. the oldest scholarly societies in North America, the DSA predates both the Modern Language Association, founded in 1883, and the American Historic ...

from 1979 to 1985. He was head of Princeton University's

Butler College Lee D. Butler College is one of the six residential colleges of Princeton University, founded in 1983. It houses about 500 freshmen and sophomores, 100 juniors and seniors, 10 Resident Graduate Students, a faculty member in residence, as well ...

from 1991 to 1995 and chair of their Department of Comparative Literature from 1994 to 1998. In 1997, Robert and Jean Hollander began working on an English translation of the ''

''. The couple's ''

Inferno Inferno may refer to: * Hell, an afterlife place of suffering * Conflagration, a large uncontrolled fire Film * ''L'Inferno'', a 1911 Italian film * ''Inferno'' (1953 film), a film noir by Roy Ward Baker * ''Inferno'' (1973 film), a German ...

'', ''

Purgatorio ''Purgatorio'' (; Italian for "Purgatory") is the second part of Dante's ''Divine Comedy'', following the '' Inferno'' and preceding the '' Paradiso''. The poem was written in the early 14th century. It is an allegory telling of the climb of ...

'', and ''

Paradiso Paradiso (Italian: ''Heaven'', literally: Paradise); may refer to: People * Paradiso (surname) Places * Gran Paradiso, a 4,000 metres mountain in Italy * Paradiso railway station (Luxembourg) * Paradiso, Switzerland, a municipality of the Ital ...

'' were released in 2000, 2003, and 2007 respectively. The translation was critically acclaimed, with novelist

Tim Parks Timothy Harold Parks (born 19 December 1954) is a British novelist, translator, author and professor of literature. Career He is the author of eighteen novels (notably ''Europa (novel), Europa'', which was List of winners and shortlisted autho ...

calling their ''Inferno'' “the finest of them all” and critic

Joan Acocella Joan Acocella (née Ross, born 1945) is an American journalist who is a staff writer for ''The New Yorker''. She has written books on dance, literature, and psychology. Education and career Acocella received her B.A. in English in 1966 from the ...

calling their entire ''Comedy'' “the best on the market.” Robert's notes to the translation were recognized as being especially thorough, with Acocella estimating that they were "almost thirty times as long as the text."

Personal life

Robert and Jean Hollander (

née A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth ...

Haberman) met as graduate students at Columbia University. They married in 1964 and had three children, one of whom died in infancy. Jean Hollander died in 2019. From 1977 onwards, Hollander's former students had an annual tradition of returning to the professor's old classroom and reading from Dante's ''Divine Comedy'' together.

Death and legacy

Hollander died on April 20, 2021 at his son's home in Pau'uilo, Hawaii. Italian news agency ''

Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata The Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA; literally "National Associated Press Agency") is the leading news agency in Italy. ANSA is a not-for-profit cooperative, whose members and owners are 36 leading news organizations in Italy. Its missi ...

'' noted that his death was only several months away from the 700th anniversary of Dante's own death. Hollander received full length obituaries in both ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

'' and ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''.

Awards and honors

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

, 1970 *

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

Senior Fellowship, 1982-83 * Gold medal of the City of

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico ...

, 1988 *

John Witherspoon John Witherspoon (February 5, 1723 – November 15, 1794) was a Scottish-American Presbyterian minister, educator, farmer, slaveholder, and a Founding Father of the United States. Witherspoon embraced the concepts of Scottish common sense real ...

Award in the Humanities, 1988 * Bronze medal of the City of

Tours Tours ( , ) is one of the largest cities in the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France. It is the prefecture of the department of Indre-et-Loire. The commune of Tours had 136,463 inhabitants as of 2018 while the population of the whole metr ...

, 1993 *

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Ca ...

Grant, 1993 * Honorary Citizen of

Certaldo Certaldo is a town and ''comune'' of Tuscany, Italy, in the Metropolitan City of Florence, in the middle of Valdelsa. It is about southwest of the Florence Duomo. It is 50 minutes by rail and 35 minutes by car southwest of Florence, and it is 40 ...

, 1997 * International

Nicola Zingarelli Nicola Zingarelli (; August 28, 1860 — June 6, 1935) was an Italian philologist, the founder of the Zingarelli Italian dictionary. He was born in Cerignola (Apulia) and died in Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city ...

Prize, 1999 * Elected to membership in the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, ...

, 2005 * Gold Florin award from the City of Florence, 2008

Publications

Books

* ''Allegory in Dante's "Commedia."'' Princeton:

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent Academic publishing, publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, ...

, 1969. * ''Boccaccio's Two Venuses''. New York:

Columbia University Press Columbia University Press is a university press based in New York City, and affiliated with Columbia University. It is currently directed by Jennifer Crewe (2014–present) and publishes titles in the humanities and sciences, including the fi ...

, 1977. * ''Studies in Dante''. Ravenna: Longo, 1980. * ''Il Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella "Commedia."'' 'The Dantean Virgil: Tragedy in the “Comedy”''Translated by Anna Maria Castellini & Margherita Frankel. Florence: Olschki, 1983. * ''Boccaccio's Last Fiction: "Il Corbaccio."'' Philadelphia:

University of Pennsylvania Press The University of Pennsylvania Press (or Penn Press) is a university press affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The press was originally incorporated with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on 26 M ...

, 1988. * ''Dante's Epistle to Cangrande''. Ann Arbor:

University of Michigan Press The University of Michigan Press is part of Michigan Publishing at the University of Michigan Library. It publishes 170 new titles each year in the humanities and social sciences. Titles from the press have earned numerous awards, including ...

, 1993. * ''Boccaccio's Dante and the Shaping Force of Satire''. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997. * ''Dante Alighieri''. Rome: Marzorati-Editalia, 2000. * ''Dante''. New Haven & London:

Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous. , Yale Univer ...

, 2001. (Paperback reprint, 2015.) * ''The Elements of Grammar in Ninety Minutes''. New York:

Dover Publications Dover Publications, also known as Dover Books, is an American book publisher founded in 1941 by Hayward and Blanche Cirker. It primarily reissues books that are out of print from their original publishers. These are often, but not always, books ...

, 2011.

Translations

All of the following co-written with Jean Hollander * Dante'', Inferno''. Doubleday, 2000. (

Anchor An anchor is a device, normally made of metal , used to secure a vessel to the bed of a body of water to prevent the craft from drifting due to wind or current. The word derives from Latin ''ancora'', which itself comes from the Greek ...

paperback edition: 2002.) * Dante'', Purgatorio''. Doubleday, 2003. (Anchor paperback edition: 2004.) * Dante'', Paradiso''. Doubleday, 2007. (Anchor paperback edition: 2008.)

Notes

References

External links

Dartmouth Dante Project

Princeton Dante Project

Hollander's commentary to the ''Divine Comedy''
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hollander, Robert 1933 births 2021 deaths American academics Italian–English translators Translators of Dante Alighieri Dante scholars People from Manhattan Collegiate School (New York) alumni Princeton University alumni Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Princeton University faculty