ד"ר פרנצ'סקה גורגוני
Francesca Gorgoni is senior lecturer at Bar-Ilan University. Her PhD focused on reception of the Arabic commentary tradition on Aristotle’s Poetics in Jewish medieval philosophy. Her research focuses on the comparative and contrastive study of Arabic, Latin and Jewish medieval philosophy on the background of the Neoplatonic and Aristotelian thought. Her interests include the place of dialectics - rhetorics and poetics in particular - in the philosophical inquiry; the relation between dialectics, noetic and metaphysics; the making of the Jewish medieval thought, through the translations of a multifaceted corpus of writings, from Arabic, Judeo-Arabic, Latin into Hebrew, and the legacy of this corpus in the early modern times. She works on the rise and spread of the Humanistic culture in several complementary geographical areas, in the East and in the West, with a special attention to the circulation of ancient philosophy from the medieval Islamicate world and Europe, up to the Italian Renaissance.
She is currently part of the European ANR-DFG project on “Moses mi-Rieti and his Miqdash Me’at”, in which she is editing the so called “scientific cantos” of the poem. She is also coordinator for the Hebrew side in the project Aristotle’s Poetics from the East to the West, directed by Dimitri GUtas (yale University) and Beatrice Gründler (Freie Universität Berlin).
Beside her research activities she is involved in projects enhancing the translation of Israeli poetry into Italian.
קורות חיים
Higher Education
2004-2009: BA ''La Sapienza'' University of Rome (Italy), with a thesis on "L'influenza delle fonti patristiche nell'iconografia medievale dell'albero della vita". Supervisor: Professor Maria Pia Ciccarese. Grade: Magna cum Laude.
2005-2011: Biblical Studies at the Rabbinical College of Rome (Ancient Hebrew, Biblical Texts and commentaries).
2009-2011: MA ''La Sapienza'' University of Rome (Italy), Department of Archaeology and Art History of the Ancient Near East and Islam, with a thesis on "Il manifestarsi del linguaggio: la radice a-m-r nelle fonti accadiche, ebraiche e in arabo classico" (The Root A-M-R in Akkadian, Hebrew and Arabic Sources). Supervisor: Professor Olivier Durand and Professor Lorenzo Verderame. Grade: Magna cum Laude.
2010: Erasmus Program (Visiting Student) at Maximilian University of Munich (Germany) at the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies.
2011-2012: Visiting Student at Aix-Marseille University (France) at the IREMAM (Institut de Recherches et d'Etudes sur les Mondes Arabes et Musulmans) .
2012-2017: PhD: INALCO (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales Paris). Title: The Hebrew Translation of the Middle Commentary of Ibn Rushd on the Aristotle's Poetics: a critical edition, French translation and study of the text.
Advisors: Prof. Alessandro Guetta (Jewish Philosophy, Inalco) and Prof. Pierre Larcher (Arabic Linguistic, Aix-en-Provence/Marseille University).
Jury de thèse: Professor Philippe Cassuto (Aix-Marseille University), Professor Colette Sirat (CNRS), Professor David Wirmer (University of Cologne).
Rapporteurs de thèse: Professor Sarah Stroumsa (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Professor Mauro Zonta ("Sapienza" University).
פירסומים
List of Publications
Dissertation
1. The Hebrew Translation of the Middle Commentary of Ibn Rushd on the Aristotle's Poetics: a critical edition, French translation and study of the text. PhD doctoral thesis defended in Paris, INALCO (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales), 27/02/2017.
Book accepted for publication
2. La Poétique d'Aristote dans la tradition juive médiévale. Edition et étude de la version hébraïque du Commentaire moyen d'Averroès à la Poétique d’Aristote (Aristotle’s Poetics in the Jewish Medieval Tradition. Edition and Study of the Hebrew translation of Averroes’s Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics), série Collection de la Révue des Etudes Juives, Peeters Publishers Leuven (2025)
Edited Volume
3. Philosophical Translations in Late Antiquity and Middle Ages. Volume in honor Mauro Zonta, F. Gorgoni – I. Kajon – L. Valente [eds.], Aracne Editore, 2022.
Articles published and accepted for publication
4. Qasmûna bint Isma'il bin Bagdalla al-Yahûdi: frammenti di poesia araba andalusa secondo le fonti arabe (Qasmûna bint Isma'il bin Bagdalla al-Yahûdi: Fragments of Arabic Poetry according to Arabic Sources), Altre Modernità, n. 5, 2014, pp. 210–220.
5. Studying Arabic Philosophy: Meaning, Limits, and Challenges of a Modern Discipline, Report of the First International Conference on the Historiography of Arabic-Islamic Philosophy, Paris 4–7 September 2013, in Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale, n. 55, Brepols, 2014, pp. 308–314.
6. La notion de Melekhet ha-Shir ‘l’art de la poésie’ dans le Sefer ha-Shir de Todros Todrosi (The Notion of Melekhet ha-Shir ‘the art of poetry’ in Todros Todrosi’s Sefer ha-Shir), in Altre Modernità, n. 11, 2017, pp. 54–73.
7. Mi- ʿaravit le ʿivrit: Sefer ha-Shiʻir le-Ariṣṭo ve- ‘oẓar ha-milim shel ha-Poeṭiqa le-Ariṣṭo be-ʿivrit shel yemey ha-beynayim (From Arabic into Hebrew: The Book of Poetry by Aristotle and the Vocabulary of Poetics in Medieval Hebrew), in ʿIvrit ve-'aramit bi-mey ha-beynayim [Hebrew and Aramaic in the Middle Ages], E. Bar Asher – D. Yaʿakov – S. Yaʿakov [eds.], The Academy for the Hebrew Language, 2020, pp. 103–120.
8. Jewish Averroism, in Encyclopaedia of Mediterranean Humanism, online https://www.encyclopedie-humanisme.com/.
9. The Jewish Reception of Aristotle’s Poetics in 13th- and 14th-century Provence: a survey of the Arabic sources, European Journal of Jewish Studies, n. 16, 2022, pp. 1-21.
10. La tradizione ebraica della Iggeret Baʿaley Ḥayyim (Epistola degli animali) degli Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ: una breve ricognizione dei manoscritti e delle stampe moderne (The Hebrew Tradition of Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ’s Iggeret Baʿaley Ḥayyim (The Epistle of the Animals), from the Medieval Manuscripts to the Modern Printed Editions), Materia Giudaica, 2021, pp. 105-116.
11. Mauro Zonta, Saggio di lessicografia filosofica araba, (Philosophica. Testi e studi n.7), Paideia Editrice, Brescia 2014, pp. 329, review edited in OCCHIALÌ – Rivista sul Mediterraneo Islamico, n. 8, 2021.
12. De l’adab au musar : La littérature philosophique hébraïque dans la formation de l’éthique juive au Moyen Âge (From Adab to Musar : the Impact of Jewish Philosophical Literature in the Formation of Medieval Jewish Ethics), in Adab toujours recommencé : « origines », transmission et métamorphoses, F. Bellino – C. Mayeur – Jaouen – L. Patrizi [eds.], Brill, 2023, pp. 286-304.
13. «Agli arabi è occorsa al riguardo una cosa (amr) al di fuori della natura»: Una nota su Averroè e la lingua araba, tra universalismo e particolarismo (‘A matter (amr) outside nature has happened to the Arabs’ : Averroes on Arabic Language, between Universalism and Particularism), in Philosophical Translations in Late Antiquity and Middle Ages. Volume in honor Mauro Zonta, F. Gorgoni – I. Kajon – L. Valente [eds.], Aracne Editore, pp. 45-62.
14. Ṭodros Ṭodrosi’s accessus ad auctorem: A Hebrew “Aristotelian prologue” to Averroes’ Middle Commentaries on Rhetoric and Poetics, in Jewish Averroism, R. Haliva –Y. Meyrav – D. Davies [eds.], Brill 2024, pp. 397-419.
15. The Hebrew Reception of Aristotle’s Rhetoric: Translations and Commentaries, entry for the Cambridge History of Rhetoric, J. Ross and F. Woerther [eds.], Cambridge University Press, forthcoming in 2025.
In preparation
16. An Unknown Hebrew Manuscript of al-Fārābī's Commentary on Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics: D. Sofer 96.
17. A Judeo-Arabic commentary on Avicenna’s theory of Pulse. Music and Medicine in 15th century Saragossa, with Dr. Giulia Accornero (Musicology, Harvard University).
18. Vol. 1 : The critical edition of Be’ur Sefer ha-Shir, the Hebrew Translation of the Middle Commentary of Ibn Rushd on the Aristotle's Poetics with an English Annotated translation (The critical edition will be published in the Project “The Poetics of Aristotle between Europe and Islam. A Multilingual Edition with Studies of the Cultural Contexts of the Syriac, Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin Translations” directed by Beatrice Gründler (Freie Universität Berlin) and Dimitri Gutas (University of Yale), expected in 2023.
Vol. 2 : Studies on Averroes's Middle Commentary on Aristotle's Poetics – Studies. (The collective volume of studies will be published in the Project “The Poetics of Aristotle between Europe and Islam. A Multilingual Edition with Studies of the Cultural Contexts of the Syriac, Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin Translations” directed by Beatrice Gründler (Freie Universität Berlin) and Dimitri Gutas (University of Yale), expected in 2023.
Modern Translations
19. Italian translation of selected poems from the collections Regaʿim (''Moments'') and Kokhavim ba-ḥuẓ (''Stars Outside'') by Nathan Alterman (1910-1979) with a biographical description of the author. Edited in Smerilliana, the Italian journal for modern poetry in translation, n. 23, 2020, pp. 51–75.
20. Fuori le stelle. Italian translation of selected poems from the collection Kokhavim ba-ḥuẓ (''Stars Outside'') by Nathan Alterman with a biographical description of the author for Nuovi Argomenti, 2021, online: http://www.nuoviargomenti.net/poesie/nathan-alterman-fuori-le-stelle/.
21. Avot Yeshurun. Poesie e Prose. Italian translation of selected poems and proses by Avot Yeshurun (1904-1992) in Nuovi Argomenti, 2023, online:
http://www.nuoviargomenti.net/poesie/sono-nato-nel-distretto-di-volhynie-il-giorno-di-yom-kippur/.
22. Italian translation of selected poems from the collection Pnay by Zelda (1914-1984) with a biographical description of the author. Edited in Smerilliana, the Italian journal for modern poetry in translation, n. 25, 2023, pp. 83–111.
23. Mahmud Darwish, Con la lingua dell’altro. Italian translation of a rare interview in Hebrew language between the Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish and Helit Yeshurun, edited by Portatori d’acqua, 2024.
תאריך עדכון אחרון : 05/01/2025
