The Early Books Lecture Series was established at the University of Arizona by Dr. Albrecht Classen, University Distinguished Professor of German Studies, in partnership with University Libraries Special Collections. For 20 years, University of Arizona scholars and Special Collections have invited the community to explore rare books, held by Special Collections, that provide primary resource materials for research, and are open for students, faculty, staff, and visitors to access.

The lectures are free, open to the public, and held in the Special Collections Reading Room in person and virtual, 6pm to 8pm. A reception follows each lecture. 

Tuesday, April 8

Fabian Alfie, Professor, Italian Studies, College of Humanities

Presentation: Petrarch and the Whore of Babylon: Censorship in an Age of Religious Strife 

Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374) is commonly pigeon-holed as the composer of love sonnets, but he wrote about other topics as well. He penned three laments about the corrupt papal court in Avignon. Two centuries after Petrarch’s death, in the tumult accompanying the birth of Protestantism, those same sonnets were deployed against Catholicism, resulting in their censorship in many published editions of his verse. This talk will discuss one such censored volume in Special Collections, and it will trace the fascinating story of how Petrarch's complaints about Avignon influenced the language of Martin Luther and his followers.    

Fabian Alfie is a professor of Italian at the University of Arizona on medieval and Renaissance literature. He completed his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1995, and he joined the University of Arizona faculty in 1997. Throughout his career, the focus of his research has been on the comic / satiric literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. He has published books on Cecco Angiolieri, Dante, Rustico Filippi, Burchiello (2017—co-authored with Aileen Feng), and Folgore da San Gimignano (2021). His next project is a translation of the homoerotic poets of Perugia (Cecco Nuccoli, Marino Ceccoli), which will be published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2026.     

Register for the April 8 lecture.

Tuesday, April 15

Faith S. Harden, Director of Graduate Studies, Associate Professor, College of Humanities

Presentation: Celestina & The Bawd of Madrid: Censorship, Translation & Adaptation of an Early Modern Spanish Bestseller 

This talk will highlight two books held in Special Collections: a 1599 edition of the bestselling, and controversial Spanish novel-in-dialogue: Celestina or La tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea (carefully censored by hand by an early reader), and a 1707 English translation and adaptation, titled The Bawd of Madrid and published as part of the picaresque collection The Spanish Libertines. 

Faith S. Harden earned her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 2012 and arrived at the University of Arizona shortly afterwards, after teaching at the University of St. Thomas and the University of Southern California. She specializes in the literary and textual cultures of the 16th- and 17th-century Spanish-speaking world. Her first book Arms and Letters: Military Life Writing in Early Modern Spain (University of Toronto Press, 2020) explored the multi-faceted rhetoric of honor in the autobiographical writing of Spanish soldiers. She is currently at work on an English translation of the pseudo-autobiographical picaresque novel Estebanillo González, hombre de buen humor (1646).   

Register for the April 15 lecture.

Tuesday, April 22

Dr. Albrecht Classen, University Distinguished Professor, German Studies, College of Humanities

Presentation: Craftsmen as Masterbuilders in the Middle Ages: The Mendel Housebooks (Nuremberg)

Medieval craftsmen (and craftswomen at times) were mostly highly skilled and amazing artists in their field. This explains why we have such stunning architecture, weapons, tools, sculptures, or armor from the Middle Ages built by them. This talk will present the most famous collection of images of craftsmen, the Mendel Hausbücher (Housebooks) which is particularly impressive considering the details and range of information.