Directory of Research and Expertise

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Research Summary and Profile

Research interests:

Classics, Language and Literature (French), Language and Literature (Italian)

Summary of research interests and expertise:

Nicholas Mann has recently retired at the end of a career spent entirely in universities, of which he has a long and varied experience. He took a BA in modern and (mostly) medieval languages and literature at Cambridge, where he also did a PhD. His first teaching post was a lectureship at the University of Warwick (1967-1972); he was then Fellow and Tutor of Pembroke College Oxford for eighteen years, acting on the way as Dean of Graduate Students, and Senior Tutor, and in an extracurricular capacity as Chairman of the Council of the Museum of Modern Art

In 1990 he was appointed Director of the Warburg Institute in the University of London, shifting the focus of his attention to the nurturing of research. Eleven years later he was appointed Dean of London University's School of Advanced Study, responsible for the ten humanities and social science research institutes at the heart of the University. In 2003 he took on the additional duties of a Pro-Vice-Chancellor, the most onerous of which consisted of the care of seven major research libraries

He has whenever possible pursued his own research, mainly into early Italian humanism and the scholarly life of the poet Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca, 1304-1374), on which he has lectured in a dozen countries; most of his publications lurk unattended in learned journals; many are in French or Italian. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1992, and from 1999 to 2006 served as its Foreign Secretary and Vice-President. He was the Vice-President of ALLEA (the federation of European Academies) from 2007-2011.

He was appointed CBE in 1999, awarded an Hon. DLitt. by the University of Warwick in 2006, and an Honorary Fellowship by Pembroke College Oxford in 2007.

Publication Details

Related publications/articles:

Date	Details
01-Jan-2016	My Secret Book Edited Book Francesco Petrarca (2016) My Secret Book. Edited and translated by Nicholas Mann (I Tatti Renaissance Library, 72), (Cambridge, Mass. 2016) ISBN 9780674003460
01-Jan-2012	Petrarch: the life of letters’, in Petrarch: the Self and the World, ed. S and S Chaudhuri, Kolkata 2012, 23-45
01-Jan-2012	‘De afhaalcultuur van het lezen: de verloren liefde voor het boek’, Nexus, 61 (2012), 34-42.
01-Jan-2011	The Sum of the Parts: ALLEA and the Academies, ed. Jüri Englebrecht and Nicholas Mann, Amsterdam 2011, 164 pp.: joint author of ‘Academies, ALLEA and knowledge-based society’ (5-51); sole author of ‘Discussion paper 2004’ (55-56), ‘Towards a European Young Academy’ (81-91), and ‘Petrarch replies to Posterity’ (133-44).
01-Jan-2010	‘Briefkaart uit het verleden. Vincenzo Foppa, De jonge Cicero, lezend’ [‘A Postcard from the Past: Vincenzo Foppa, Young Cicero reading’], Nexus, 55 (2010), 42-44.
01-Jan-2009	'Dall’orto al paesaggio: Petrarca tra filologia e natura’, in Petraca e i suoi luoghi. Spazi reali e paesaggi poetici alle origini del moderno senso della natura, ed. D. Luciani and M. Mosser (Treviso 2009 [2010]), 57-70.
01-Jan-2009	‘The problem with Petrarch’, The Raconteur, 3 (2009), 41-43.
01-Jan-2008	'Translatio studii: Warburgian Kulturwissenschaft in London, 1933-1945’, in The Migration of Ideas, ed. Roberto Scazzieri and Raffaella Simili (Sagamore Beach, MA, 2008), 151-160.
01-Jan-2008	‘Het nageslacht antwoordt Petrarca’ [‘Posterity replies to Petrarch’] French translation: ‘Lettre de la postérité à Pétrarque’, Conférence, 28 (2009), 193-208 ; English original in The Sum of the Parts: ALLEA and the Academies (see 2011 above)
01-Jan-2008	‘Het nageslacht antwoordt Petrarca’ [‘Posterity replies to Petrarch’], in Europees humanisme in fragmenten. Grammatica van een ongesproken taal, ed. R. Riemen (= Nexus, 50), Amsterdam 2008, 518-28.
27-Jan-2007	‘Presentation of Luce Irigaray for the Degree of Doctor of Literature honoris causa’, Journal of Romances Studies, 4 (2004), 85-88 ‘L’IRHT, avenir d’une tradition : conclusion’, in L’IRHT, avenir d’une tradition. Journée d’étude organisée le 25 janvier 2007, Paris, IRHT, 2007 (Ædilis, Actes, 13)
01-Jan-2007	‘Petrarca philobiblon: the author and his books’, in Literary Cultures and the Material Book, ed. S. Eliot, A. Nash and I. Willison (London 2007), 159-73.
01-Jan-2006	‘Entre le miroir et la mort: considérations sur la connaissance de soi chez Pétrarque’, in La Postérité répond à Pétrarque. Sept siècles de fortune pétrarquienne en France, éd. Ève Duperray (Paris 2006), 309-320.
01-Jan-2005	Britannia Latina: Latin in the Culture of Great Britain from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century, ed. Charles Burnett and Nicholas Mann, Warburg Institute Colloquia 8 (London 2005), x + 230 pp. Edited Book
01-Dec-2004	‘Sei inediti. Traduzione dall’inglese e cura di Cinzia Fratucello’ (six poems), Smerilliana, 4 (luglio-dicembre 2004), Rome 2004, 225-239.
19-Jul-2004	Participation in two programmes celebrating the seventh centenary of Petrarch’s birth: ‘Petrarch’ on BBC radio 3, 11 July 2004; ‘La postérité répond à Pétrarque: une déclaration à la postérité’, France Culture, 19 July 2004.
01-Jan-2004	Carnets de voyage. Poesie (Turin 2003), 90 pp.; French translations of 16 of these poems by Christophe Carraud appear under the title ‘D’un carnet de voyage’ in Conférence, 18 (printemps 2004), 227-94.
01-Jan-2004	‘La perfettibilità perpetua delle stelle petrarchesche’, in J. Risset, N. Mann, V. Magrelli, Tra Petrarca e Leopardi: variazioni inclusive. Lezioni Sapegno 2004 (Turin 2006), 29-38. Articles
01-Jan-2004	Pétrarque: les voyages de l’esprit (Grenoble 2004)
01-Jan-2003	Contributions to Petrarca nel tempo.Tradizione, lettori e immagini delle opere, ed. M. Feo, Arezzo 2003, pp. 278, 288-90, 389-95, 526-27. Articles
01-Jan-2003	‘Picturing poetics: Petrarch and Simone Martini’, in The Renaissance Fantasy: Arts, Politics and Travel, ed. Francis K. H. So, Wang I-chun and Tee KimTong (Sun Yat-sen Journal of Humanities Series, 6) Kaohsiung 2003, 1-21. Articles
01-Jan-2003	‘Denkenergetische Inversion: Aby Warburg and Giordano Bruno’, Publications of the English Goethe Society, 72 (2003), 25-37. Articles
01-Jan-2003	‘Parole in aria’, Poesia, XVI, febbraio 2003, no.169, 72-75.
01-Jan-2003	‘Arquà Petrarca: la chaise où mourût le poète’, Poésie 96, 61 (février 1996), 93-95; reprinted in Petrarca nel tempo.Tradizione, lettori e immagini delle opere, ed. M. Feo, Arezzo 2003, 526-27
28-Jun-2002	‘Learned but weak?’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 28 June 2002, 17. Articles
01-Jan-2002	‘Two-Way Traffic: the Warburg Institute as a Microcosm of Cultural Exchange between Britain and Europe’, in The British Contribution to the Europe of the Twenty-First Century, ed. Basil Markesinis (Oxford-Portland Oregon 2002), 93-104. Articles
01-Jan-2002	‘Mnemosyne: “Dalla parola all’immagine”’, in Aby Warburg, MNEMOSYNE:L’Atlante delle immagini, a cura di Martin Warnke con la collaborazione di Claudia Brink; edizione italiana a cura di Maurizio Ghelardi (Turin 2002), vii-xi. Articles
01-Jan-2002	‘Le metamorfosi di Aby Warburg’, in Aby Warburg e le metamorfosi degli antichi dei, a cura di Marco Bertozzi (Ferrara 2002), 12-19. Articles
01-Jan-2001	‘Grands instituts d’art. The Warburg Institute’, Nouvelles de l’Institut national de l’histoire de l’art, 5 (2001), 6-7. Articles
01-Jan-2001	‘Renaissance Research Centres: Number 4. The Warburg Institute’, Renaissance Journal, 1, no. 4 (June 2001), 9-10. Articles
01-Jan-2000	‘From Laurel to Fig: Petrarch and the Structures of the Self’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 105 (2000), 17-42. Articles ‘Pétrarque: les voyages de l’esprit. 1. Du croisement au sommet; 2. De l’imitation à la création’, Conférence, 13 (2001), 499-545; ‘3. De la poétique à l’image’,14 (2002), 433-61; ‘4.Des images à la postérité’, 15 (2002), 469-516.
01-Jan-2000	Crass Eurocracy: a Personal View’, Bulletin of the Schweitzerische Akademie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften, 2 (May 2000), 41-42. Articles
01-Jan-1999	‘In memoria di Charles B. Schmitt, studioso della filosofia e della scienza nel Rinascimento, III’, Quaderni per la storia dell’Università di Padova, 32 (1999), 343-45. Articles
01-Jan-1999	Photographs at the Frontier. Aby Warburg in America 1895-1896, ed. Benedetta Cestelli Guidi and Nicholas Mann (London 1998), 160 pp. German translation: Grenzüberweiterungen. Aby Warburg in Amerika 1895-1896 (Hamburg 1999). Articles
01-Jan-1999	‘Préface’, in Pétrarque, De vita solitaria/La Vie solitaire 1346-1366, édition bilingue latin-français, éd. Christophe Carraud, Grenoble 1999, 5-6. Articles
07-Aug-1998	Interviews on France Culture (A la rencontre de l’Europe, 7 August 1998), RAI Radiotre (Appunti di volo, 18 October 1998), France Culture (Peinture fraîche, 19 May 1999), Deutsche Welle (Census, 1 and 8 February 2000).
01-Jan-1998	‘Carnets de voyage’, The West Looks East (online cultural review) n.d. [1998]
01-Jan-1998	Foreword’ to Contemporary Applied Arts: 50 Years of Craft, ed. Tanya Harrod and Mary La Trobe-Bateman (London 1998), 7.
01-Jan-1998	‘Petrarch and portraits’, in The Image of the Individual: Portraits in the Renaissance, ed. Nicholas Mann and Luke Syson, (London 1998), 15-21 Articles
01-Jan-1998	‘El Warburg Institute: orígenes e historia. Entrevista con Nicholas Mann, Director’, Kalías. Revista d’arte, 10, no. 19-20 (1998), 142-51. Articles
01-Jan-1998	Aby Warburg e Schifanoia. Una proposta d’indagine’, in Il cosmo incantanto di Schifanoia. Aby Warburg e la storia delle immagini astrologiche (Ferrara 1998), 11-12. Papers
01-Jan-1998	‘The Warburg Institute, London’, in Istituti culturali e nuove tecnologie. Atti della IV Conferenza Nazionale degli Istituti culturali (Rome 1998), 168-71. Articles
01-Jan-1998	The Image of the Individual: Portraits in the Renaissance, ed. Nicholas Mann and Luke Syson (London 1998), 240 pp. Edited Book
01-Jan-1998	‘The origins of humanism’ in The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism, ed. J. Kraye (Cambridge 1996), pp. 1-19; Spanish translation ‘Origenes del humanismo’ in Introducción al humanismo renacentista (Cambridge-Madrid 1998) Articles
01-Jan-1997	Giordano Bruno, 1583-1585: The English Experience/L’esperienza inglese. Atti del convegno (Londra, 3-4 giugno 1994), ed. Michele Ciliberto and Nicholas Mann (Florence 1997), viii + 180 Edited Book
01-Jan-1996	Lorenzo the Magnificent: Culture and Politics, ed. Michael Mallett and Nicholas Mann, Warburg Institute Colloquia 3 (London 1996), x + 324 pp. Edited Book
01-Jan-1996	Medieval and Renaissance Scholarship. Proceedings of the Second European Science Foundation Workshop on the Classical Tradition in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (London, Warburg Institute, 27-28 November 1992), ed. Nicholas Mann and Birger Munk Olsen (Leiden 1996), xii + 268 pp. Edited Book
01-Jan-1996	Il Bucolicum carmen e la sua eredità’, in Il Petrarca latino e le origini dell’umanesimo (Quaderni Petrarcheschi, 9-10) (Florence 1996), II, 513-35. Articles
01-Jan-1996	‘The daughters of Memory’, Forma nel verde 1996. XXVI edizione. Personale di scultura di Matthew Spender (San Quirico d’Orcia 1996), 50-54, with Italian translation, 16-18. Articles
01-Jan-1995	‘Kulturwissenschaft in London: englisches Fortleben einer europäischen Tradition’, in Aby M. Warburg. “Ekstatische Nymphe...trauernder Flußgott”: Porträt eines Gelehrten, ed. R. Galitz and B. Reimers (Hamburg 1995), 210-227. Articles
01-Jan-1995	‘Kulturwissenschaft in London: englisches Fortleben einer europäischen Tradition’, in Aby M. Warburg. “Ekstatische Nymphe...trauernder Flußgott”: Porträt eines Gelehrten, ed. R. Galitz and B. Reimers (Hamburg 1995), 210-227. Articles
01-Jan-1995	Articles on Guillaume Budé, Etienne Dolet, Jean Gerson, Italian influence on French literature, Martin Lefranc and Philippe de Vitry in The New Oxford Companion to French Literature, ed. P. France (Oxford 1995). Articles
01-Jan-1994	‘Pétrarque et les métamorphoses de Daphné’, Bulletin de l’Association Guillaume Budé, 53 (1994), 382-403. Articles
03-Mar-1993	‘Aby Warburg, uno studioso eccentrico’ (with E.H. Gombrich and R. Klibansky), RAI 3, May 1993
01-Jan-1993	‘Speculum mundi’, Studi Romani, 41 (1993), 5-14. Articles
01-Jan-1993	‘Il Petrarca giardiniere (a proposito del sonetto 228)’, in Atti dell’Accademia Patavina di scienze lettere ed arti, 104 (1991-92) [1993], 235-56.
01-Jan-1993	‘The Warburg Institute: past, present and future’, in Porträt aus Büchern: Bibliothek Warburg und Warburg Institute, ed. M. Diers (Hamburg 1993), 133-43. Articles
01-Jan-1993	‘Foreword’ to Cultural Atlas of the Renaissance, by C.F. Black et al. (New York-London 1993), pp. 11-12. Articles
01-Jan-1991	Descriptions of manuscripts and text of the Bucolicum carmen, in Codici latini del Petrarca nelle biblioteche fiorentine. Mostra 19 maggio - 30 giugno 1991, ed. M Feo (Florence 1991), pp. 76-84, 398-99, 423-25. Articles
01-Jan-1991	Yoga’, in Oxford Children’s Encyclopedia, V (Oxford 1991), 249.
01-Jan-1990	Numerous reviews between the mid 1960s and 1990 (see details) Review Numerous reviews in the following journals between the mid 1960s and 1990: Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Cambridge Review, Classical Review, French Studies, Italian Studies, Leonardo, Medium Aevum, Modern Language Review, Notes and Queries, Studi Francesi, Times Educational Supplement and Times Literary Supplement.
01-Jan-1990	‘Thoroughly modern museum’, Oxford Today, 2, no. 3 (Trinity Term 1990), 25. Articles
01-Jan-1989	‘L’edizione critica del Bucolicum carmen’, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 19 (1989), 231-38. Articles
01-Jan-1987	‘In margine alla quarta egloga: piccoli problemi di esegesi petrarchesca’, Studi Petrarcheschi, n.s.4 (1987) 17-32. Articles
01-Jan-1984	Petrarch (Past Masters series) (Oxford 1984) Edited Book Translated into French (Arles 1989; revised ed. Arles 1994), Spanish (Madrid 1989) and Italian (Milan 1993).
01-Jan-1984	A Concordance to Petrarch’s Bucolicum Carmen (Quaderni Petrarcheschi, 2) (Pisa, 1984) Edited Book
01-Jan-1984	‘Double first’ (co-author with R. Harris), Crafts, no. 69 (July-August 1984), 54-55. Articles
01-Jan-1984	‘Patron’s pleasure’, Southern Arts Bulletin, no. 27 (July-August 1984), 10-11. Articles
01-Jan-1981	‘Aneddoti d’una perfettibilità perpetua: il Petrarca autocritico’, La Cultura, 19 (1981), 39-51. Articles
01-Jan-1980	‘Petrarch and humanism: the paradox of posterity’, in Francesco Petrarca, Citizen of the World, ed. A.S. Bernardo (Padua-Albany 1980), 287-99. Articles
01-Jan-1977	‘Il Petrarca e gli inizi del rinascimento inglese’, La Cultura, 15 (1977), 3-18. Articles
01-Jan-1977	‘The making of Petrarch’s Bucolicum carmen: a contribution to the history of the text’, Italia Medioevale e Umanistica, 20 (1977), 127-82. Articles
01-Jan-1976	‘Dal moralista al poeta: appunti per la fortuna del Petrarca in Inghilterra’, in Convegno Internazionale Francesco Petrarca (Atti dei Convegni Lincei, 10) (Rome 1976), 59-69. ‘Benintendi Ravagnani, il Petrarca, l’umanesimo veneziano’, in Petrarca, Venezia e il Veneto (Florence 1976), 109-22. Articles
01-Jan-1976	‘Petrarca e la cancelleria veneziana’, in Storia della cultura veneta, II (Vicenza 1976), 517-35. Articles
01-Jan-1975	‘La prima fortuna del Petrarca in Inghilterra’, in Il Petrarca ad Arquà, (Padua 1975), 279-89. Articles
01-Jan-1975	‘“O Deus, qualis epistola!”: a new Petrarch letter’, Italia Medioevale e Umanistica, 17 (1975), 207-43. Articles
01-Jan-1975	Petrarch Manuscripts in the British Isles (Italia Medioevale e Umanistica, 18: Censimento dei codici Petrarcheschi, 6) (Padua 1975), Edited Book
18-Jul-1974	‘Petrarch’s literary love’, BBC Third Programme, 18 July 1974
01-Jan-1974	Travels with Francesco Petrarca, by G. Frasso and G. Billanovich, translated by Nicholas Mann (Padua 1974) Edited Book
01-Jan-1974	‘A Petrarch letter in the Bodleian’, Times Literary Supplement, 12 April 1974, 400. Articles
01-Jan-1973	‘Jean Daudin’, ‘Pierre Flamenc’ and ‘Martin le Franc’ in Dizionario critico della letteratura francese, ed. F. Simone (Turin 1973), 335, 435, 655-56 Articles
01-Jan-1972	‘Recherches sur l’influence et la diffusion du De remediis de Pétrarque aux Pays-Bas’, in The Late Middle Ages and the Dawn of Humanism outside Italy (Leuven-The Hague 1972), 78-88. Articles
01-Jan-1971	‘Petrarch and the transmission of classical elements’, in Classical Influences on European Culture, ed. R.R. Bolgar (Cambridge 1971), 217-24. Articles
01-Jan-1971	‘Humanisme et patriotisme en France au quinzième siècle’, Cahiers de l’Association Internationale des Etudes Francaises, 23 (1971), 51-66. Articles
01-Jan-1971	‘The manuscripts of Petrarch’s De remediis: a checklist’, Italia Medioevale e Umanistica, 14 (1971), 57-90. A revised version in M. Feo ed., Petrarca nel tempo.Tradizione, lettori e immagini delle opere, Arezzo 2003, 389-95 ‘The manuscripts of Petrarch’s De remediis: a checklist’, Italia Medioevale e Umanistica, 14 (1971), 57-90. A revised version in M. Feo ed., Petrarca nel tempo.Tradizione, lettori e immagini delle opere, Arezzo 2003, 389-95
01-Jan-1971	‘Petrarch’s role in humanism’, Apollo, 94, no. 115 (September 1971), 176-83. Articles
01-Jan-1970	‘Pierre Flamenc, admirateur de Pétrarque’, Romania, 91 (1970), 306-40, 491-520. Articles
01-Jan-1970	‘Le recueil de Pierre Flamenc’, Scriptorium, 24 (1970), 329-38. Articles
01-Jan-1970	Petrarch’s role as moralist in fifteenth-century France’, in Humanism in France at the End of the Middle Ages and in the Early Renaissance, ed. A.H.T. Levi (Manchester 1970), 6-27. Articles
01-Jan-1969	‘La fortune de Pétrarque en France: recherches sur le De remediis’, Studi Francesi, 39 (1969), Articles
01-Jan-1969	Arnold Geilhoven: an early disciple of Petrarch in the Low Countries Articles Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 32 (1969), 73-108.
01-Jan-1969	New light on a recently discovered manuscript of the De remediis Articles Italia Medioevale e Umanistica, 12 (1969), 317-22.
01-Jan-1967	‘Back to Boccaccio’, Granta 68, no. 1234, (Cambridge, 7 March 1964), 27-28. Translation of C. Levi-Strauss, La Geste d’Asdiwal, in The Structural Study of Myth and Totemism, ed. E.R. Leach (London 1967), 1-47. Articles
01-Jan-1964	The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies: ‘French Studies: Medieval literature’ (co-editor with I.S. Laurie), 26 (1964); ‘French Studies: Fourteenth and fifteenth centuries’, 30 (1968); 31 (1969); 32 (1970). Articles
01-Jan-1960	‘The evil eye’, Fiesta (Eton College, 4 June 1960), 3-4. Articles
01-Jan-1960	‘A voyage to the Snainote, being an extract from the further travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver’, Taboo (Eton College, St Andrew’s Day 1960), 1-2. Articles

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