Editors’ Preface
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Editors’ Preface
On behalf of Theodore Cachey, Teresa Kennedy and Zygmunt Barański, it is a great pleasure finally to see this volume into print. Rarely has a book enclosed so many essays from such a variety of disciplines and perspectives. As a Special Supplement to MLN Italian, it will reach more than 1300 subscribers.
In my case it is especially satisfying to repay in small part a longstanding debt to Giuseppe Mazzotta, whom I have known since 1970, when I first began studying with him as an undergraduate. Having moved with him from Yale to Cornell in 1973 and taken the doctorate under his supervision in 1979, I am his ‘first student,’ and so am particularly happy to have been involved in the Tra Amici conference and this volume of tributes.
It will be noticed that neither I, Teresa Kennedy, Zygmunt Barański, nor Theodore Cachey have contributed essays to this volume. Given the unusual number of contributions—thirty in all—and the postal restrictions involved in delivering this Special Supplement along with the regular issue of the MLN Italian issue, we felt it best to limit our efforts to the editorial.
We would like to thank those persons and institutions whose generosity has helped defray the publication costs: the University of Mary Washington, Notre Dame University, the Johns Hopkins University, the Department of German and Romance Languages and Literatures of the Johns Hopkins University, the Charles S. Singleton Professorship in Italian Studies, and Yale University.
For my own part, I would like to acknowledge the dedication and precision of Troy Tower, who has managed the preparation of the volume with grace and aplomb. Troy’s own contributions to Italian [End Page six] Studies are already distinguished, and I could not have imagined a better editorial partner. [End Page sx]
Walter Stephens is Charles S. Singleton Professor of Italian Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, where he is also director of the Italian section of German and Romance Languages and Literatures. Of his extensive research on Italian and European cultural and intellectual history, the most recent publication is The Body in Early Modern Italy, co-edited with Julia Hairston (2010). He is now at work on a monograph treating the history of writing.
