Thomas G. Bergin

Thomas G. Bergin
Born	Thomas Goddard Bergin November 17, 1904 New Haven, Connecticut
Died	October 30, 1987 Madison, Connecticut
Occupation	Translator, author, teacher, editor
Alma mater	Yale University
Notable works	La Divina Commedia translation
Spouse	Florence Bullen
Children	Two

Thomas Goddard Bergin, OBE (November 17, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an “eminent twentieth-century American scholar of Italian literature”, who was “noted particularly for his research on Dante's Divine Comedy and for its translation.” He was the Sterling Professor of Romance Languages at Yale University, and Master of Timothy Dwight College. He is the first poet to have his words launched into outer space to orbit the earth.

He is recognized as an authority on Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, and the Provençal troubadours, as well as modern Italian writers, including Alberto Moravia, Salvatore Quasimodo, Giovanni Verga, and Giambattista Vico.Bartlett Giamatti referred to him as the “grand statesman of Italian scholarship in America.”

Among his translations are Dante's Divine Comedy (1948), which was published in three-volumes with illustrations by Leonard Baskin, Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince (1947) and Giambattista Vico's New Science (1946) with Max Fisch.

He published scholarly texts and monographs on authors and the literature of renaissance Italy, France, Spain and Provençal. His biography of the Italian author Boccaccio (1981) was considered a “notable book” of the year by the New York Times, and was a finalist in 1981 for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

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