Italian Language and Literature

Italians Studies promotes scholarship in the history and culture of the Italian peninsula, broadly understood as extending from ancient Rome, through the Middle Ages, and up to the present day. Italian Studies does not necessarily restrict itself geographically to any one region, but rather explores Italian culture and its impacts on the broader Mediterranean region and the wider world.

Related subjects include: Art, Art History, and Design, Architecture, Film, Television, and Theater, Classics, History, Western Europe, Medieval Studies, Theology and Religion, and Music.  Please see also the Dante at Notre Dame guide for specific resources about Dante Alighieri and his works. 

Library Acquisitions

The Hesburgh Libraries collect new and historical scholarship and publications relating to Dante as broadly as possible. Notre Dame faculty, staff, and students may recommend an acquisition in this area through our recommendation form.

  Recommend a Purchase

Dictionaries are most often collections of words in one or more specific languages, usually arranged in alphabetical order, providing information like word meanings, usage, etymology, and, when they contain more than one language, translations. Some dictionaries include information more commonly found in encyclopedias.  Encyclopedias are collections of information on terms, figures, eras, locations also arranged alphabetically, and, alongside definitions of terms, they also include more in-depth general information on a topic. Encyclopedias can be general or subject-specific.

Popular press resources such as newspapers and magazines are expert but non-scholarly sources that report basic facts and offer opinions. One benefit of these sources is that they are printed shortly after an event, but they do not reach the level of analysis necessary for scholarly work.