Thomas E. Peterson
Thomas E. Peterson received an MA in Italian at the University of California, Berkeley, and a PhD at Brown University.
He is the author of several books of scholarly criticism, including Petrarch’s ‘Fragmenta’: The Narrative and Theological Unity of ‘Rerum vulgarium fragmenta’ (University of Toronto Press, 2016) and The Ethical Muse of Franco Fortini (University Press of Florida, 1997), the first major study of Fortini in English. He also received the 2017 Raiziss/de Palchi Fellowship for his work translating Fortini’s poetry. Judge Antonello Borra writes:
Franco Fortini (1917–1994) was one of the most influential poets, intellectuals, translators, and essayists of his generation and yet his work remains largely unknown in the English-speaking world. Thomas E. Peterson cleverly selects from Fortini’s definitive edition, Tutte le poesie (Mondadori, 2014), and presents readers with faithful, elegant, and scholarly accurate translations that are poems in their own right. Fortini’s elegiac modes and his learned and politically charged vein are seamlessly rendered into English by Peterson’s touch and erudition.
Peterson teaches at the University of Georgia.