Renato Poggioli

Renato Poggioli (Florence April 16, 1907 – May 3, 1963), was an Italian academic specializing in comparative literature living in the United States. At the time of his death, he was the Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. A prolific writer and translator, who was fluent in five languages, he is considered one of the founders of the academic discipline of comparative literature in the United States.

Poggioli was born in Florence, Italy, the son of a railroad administrator. In 1929 he received his doctorate in letters with a specialty in Slavic literature under the direction of Ettore Lo Gatto of the University of Florence. He also worked as a translator and critic. In 1931–32 he was an exchange professor at the University of Prague, returning to Prague in 1934 to lecture on Italian culture as a representative of the Italian government. He also lectured in this capacity in Vilnius and Warsaw in Poland. In 1935, he married Renata Nordio, a former classmate and student of Spanish literature at the University of Florence. He received a second doctorate in 1937 at the University of Rome.

In 1938 Poggioli, who wished to leave Italy, came to the United States with his wife to teach in a summer program at Middlebury College in Vermont. Virtually on his arrival in New England, he became involved in anti-Fascist initiatives that led in 1939 to the creation of the Mazzini Society, of which he also served as interim president. Members included Gaetano Salvemini, (whose final lectures before his exile from Italy in 1925 Poggioli had heard as a student at the University of Florence); the former Italian foreign minister, Count Carlo Sforza; and Max Ascoli.

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