In Memoriam: Professor Michael Caesar (1945–2022)

Abstract

Michael Caesar, Emeritus Serena Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Birmingham (UK), or Mike (as he was to many of us), left a lasting impact on many academic colleagues who came to know him over his long career in Italian Studies. Having graduated in Modern Languages from Trinity Hall, Cambridge he took up a position at the University of Kent soon after. In 1994 he was appointed as Chair of Italian Studies at the University of Birmingham, where he remained until his retirement in 2014. He was a regular presence at Society for Italian Studies conferences, and contributed greatly to Italian Studies research through his impressively wide-ranging work: this includes his monograph on Umberto Eco: Philosophy, Semiotics, and the Work of Fiction (Cambridge: Polity, 1999); the coauthored book, with Ann Hallamore Caesar, Modern Italian Literature (Cambridge: Polity, 2007); edited collections, such as Dante. The Critical Heritage (New York: Routledge, 1996); Orality and Literacy in Modern Italian Culture, co-edited with Marina Spunta (New York: Routledge, 2006); many articles interrogating theoretical reflections by Gaetano Della Volpe, Eco, the neo-avantgarde, Franco Moretti; and analyses of key modern Italian authors, including Elsa Morante, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italo Calvino, and Gianni Celati. Mike’s publications helped to open up the field of Italian Studies in crucial ways, paying serious scholarly attention to topics and authors that had not previously been explored, grappling with complex theoretical ideas and making connections across genres, periods, and themes. His most significant contribution is perhaps his work on Giacomo Leopardi: Mike established the Leopardi Centre at Birmingham in 1998, which led to a swathe of exciting Ph.D. projects and important publications that were transformative for Leopardi Studies. Together with Franco D’Intino he also edited the first complete critical English edition of Leopardi’s notebooks, the Zibaldone, with translations by Kathleen Baldwin, Richard Dixon, David Gibbons, Ann Goldstein, Gerry Slowey, Martin Thom and Pamela Williams (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013). In what follows, several colleagues remember Mike’s good humour, passion for Italian culture, and his impact on themselves and on the field of Italian Studies. These memories confirm how transformative our relationships with academic colleagues can be, to ourselves, and for future generations of scholars. They reveal the many and variegated activities that make up an academic career: individual and collaborative research projects; teaching; mentoring; developing departments, programmes, and the discipline itself; opening up broader debate. Moreover, these recollections reveal how seemingly small moments can remain with us with startling clarity, and the importance of being listened to with kindness as well as with exactitude. Mike was a great (and exacting) listener, as well as a dynamic presence in Italian Studies, and he will be greatly missed. We extend our deepest sympathies to his widow, Ann Hallamore Caesar (Professor Emeritus of Italian, University of Warwick) and to his family.