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 (; most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri; – September 14, 1321), widely known mononymously as Dante, was an Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer, and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called ...

and

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

. He was described by a department chair at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

as "a pioneer in the creation of digital resources for the study of literature" for his work on the electronic Princeton and Dartmouth Dante projects. In 2008, he and his wife, Jean Hollander, co-received a Gold Florin award from the City of Florence for their English translation of Dante's ''

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

''.

Early life and education

Hollander was born in

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

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 in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

'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 wit ...

Career

Hollander began teaching at Princeton University in 1962, eventually taking

emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". In some c ...

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 Information technology, digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanitie ...

. Forty years later, literature scholar Jeffrey Schnapp called the project a "go-to tool." Hollander was elected president of the Dante Society of America from 1979 to 1985. He was head of Princeton University's Butler College 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'', '' Purgatorio'', and '' Paradiso'' were released in 2000, 2003, and 2007 respectively. The translation was critically acclaimed, with novelist Tim Parks calling their ''Inferno'' “the finest of them all” and critic Joan Acocella 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 The birth name is the name of the person given upon their birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name or to the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a births registe ...

Haberman) met as graduate students at Columbia University. They married in 1964 and had three children, one of whom died in infancy. They moved first to

Princeton, New Jersey The Municipality of Princeton is a Borough (New Jersey), borough in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton, New Jersey, Borough of Princeton and Pri ...

, and then in 1965 moved to of woods at the base of Sourland Mountain in Hopewell Township, Mercer County, New Jersey, where they were longtime residents. Jean Hollander died in 2019. From 1977 onwards, Hollander's former students had an annual tradition of returning to the professor's former classroom and reading from Dante's ''Divine Comedy'' together.

Death and legacy

Hollander died on April 20, 2021, at his son's home in Pa'auilo, 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 and one of the top ranking in the world. ANSA is a not-for-profit cooperative, whose members and owners are 36 leadin ...

'' 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'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

'' and ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

''.

Awards and honors

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

, 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 ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

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

Tours Tours ( ; ) is the largest city in the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France. It is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Indre-et-Loire. The Communes of France, commune of Tours had 136,463 inhabita ...

, 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 foundation was created by Standard Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller (" ...

Grant, 1993 * Honorary Citizen of

Certaldo Certaldo () is a town and (municipality) of Tuscany, Italy, in the Metropolitan City of Florence, located in the middle of Valdelsa. It is about southwest of the Florence Cathedral (50 minutes by rail and 35 minutes by car from the city), and 40 m ...

, 1997 * International Nicola Zingarelli Prize, 1999 * Elected to membership in the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) 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, and other ...

, 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 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, with the financial ...

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

Columbia University Press Columbia University Press is a university press based in New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's la ...

, 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, also known as Penn Press, is a university press affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. History The press was originally incorporated with b ...

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

University of Michigan Press The University of Michigan Press is a university press that is a 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 earn ...

, 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 Clarence Day, grandsons of Benjamin Day, and became a department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and ope ...

, 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, book ...

, 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 ', which itself comes from the Greek (). Anch ...

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

Articles

* Robert Hollander (''Translating Dante into English Again and Again'') and Jean Hollander (''Getting Just a Small Part of it Right''). In: Ronald de Roy (ed.)
''Divine Comedies for the New Millennium. Recent Dante Translations in America and the Netherlands''
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2003. pp. 43-54.

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 Hopewell Township, Mercer County, New Jersey People from Manhattan Collegiate School (New York) alumni Princeton University alumni Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Princeton University faculty