Acknowledgements
This volume originates from a conference titled Building the Canon. Italian Renaissance and the creation of a literary tradition, held at Harvard University (usa) in December 2015 and co-organized by Marco Romani Mistretta and myself. I am grateful to Marco for his invaluable help in organizing the event and for our stimulating conversations involving the Italian Renaissance and the classical tradition.
My deepest gratitude goes to the Departments of Classics and Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard, Villa i Tatti - The Harvard Centre for Italian Renaissance Studies, and the General Consulate of Italy in Boston for their support, and to the Department of Italian Studies at the University of Toronto for the support received during the concluding stages of the publication process.
I am also grateful to Lina Bolzoni, Marcello Ciccuto, and James Hankins for their generous guidance and encouragement. My deepest gratitude goes to Giulia Moriconi and Kim Fiona Plus for their advice and readiness to reply to editorial questions. Special thanks should be extended to the anonymous readers for their feedback, and to all the contributors for enthusiastically embracing this project.
E.M.