D'Elia, Anthony F. 1967-

PERSONAL:

Born August 8, 1967. Education: Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, Italy, D.L.L., 1988; Trinity College Dublin, B.A., M.A., 1992; Harvard University, Ph.D., A.M., 2000.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Queen's University, Department of History, 49 Bader Ln., Watson Hall, Rm. 212, Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6, Canada. E-mail—deliaa@queensu.ca.

CAREER:

Writer, editor, translator, historian, and educator. Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, associate professor of history.

WRITINGS:

The Renaissance of Marriage in Fifteenth-Century Italy, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 2004.

(Editor and translator) Bartolomeo Platina, Lives of the Popes: Antiquity, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 2008.

Contributor to periodicals and journals, including the Journal of the History of Ideas, Renaissance Quarterly, International Journal of the Classical Tradition, and the Canadian Journal of Historical Research.

SIDELIGHTS:

Writer, editor, and historian Anthony F. D'Elia is an associate professor of history at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. As a scholar, he studies the intellectual and cultural history of the Italian Renaissance and the social history of early modern Europe, noted a biographer on the Queen's University Department of History Web site. The biographer noted that D'Elia further specializes in "humanism, the history of the classical tradition, neo-Latin literature, and rhetoric and political propaganda." He teaches a variety of undergraduate courses on topics such as the Italian Renaissance; social and cultural change in early modern Europe; intimacy, sexuality, and deviance in early modern Europe; and the intellectual origins of the west, according to the Web site biographer. D'Elia has translated the works of Bartolomeo Platina, including Lives of the Popes: Antiquity as part of Harvard University Press's "I Tatti Renaissance Library" series.

D'Elia is the author of The Renaissance of Marriage in Fifteenth-Century Italy. "This book views marriage, gender, and power politics in Renaissance Italy from a previously overlooked vantage point: that of the wedding orations composed by humanists for the rulers and nobility of the Italian courts," commented Jo Ann Cavallo in the American Historical Review. D'Elia analyzes more than 330 such wedding speeches and orations, mostly in manuscript form, which were popular within the Italian court culture toward the end of the fifteenth century. About a third of the orations he covers are anonymously written, and most do not identify the bride and groom, which allows a concentrated scholarly focus on the content of the orations themselves. D'Elia focuses on the orations in their various roles, including as propaganda for the Italian court, sources of ideas and statements about courtly marriage among the Italian elite, and as the wellspring of ideas of equality in relationships for women, including sexual equality. "In these pages is much material of great interest to historians of women, the family, and sexuality as well as to Neo-Latin scholars; and assuredly parts of the book will become standard reading on courses on Italian Renaissance women," remarked Kate Lowe, writing in the Renaissance Quarterly.

D'Elia, Cavallo concluded, "argues convincingly that the revived genre of the wedding oration provides a window into Italian Renaissance court culture and at the same time sets forth ideas that would shake up the rest of Europe in the following century." Lowe called the book "a fine and scholarly addition to the burgeoning literature on marriage in Renaissance Italy."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, February, 2007, Jo Ann Cavallo, review of The Renaissance of Marriage in Fifteenth-Century Italy, p. 300.

Choice, July-August, 2005, A. Rabil, Jr., review of The Renaissance of Marriage in Fifteenth-Century Italy, p. 2056.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, summer, 2007, Julius Kirshner, review of The Renaissance of Marriage in Fifteenth-Century Italy, p. 116.

Renaissance Quarterly, spring, 2006, Kate Lowe, review of The Renaissance of Marriage in Fifteenth-Century Italy, p. 136.

Sixteenth Century Journal, summer, 2006, Sharon T. Strocchia, review of The Renaissance of Marriage in Fifteenth-Century Italy, p. 526.

Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, January, 2006, Samuel Cohn, review of The Renaissance of Marriage in Fifteenth-Century Italy, p. 169.

ONLINE

Queen's University Department of History Web site,http://www.queensu.ca/history/ (May 22, 2008), faculty profile.