Sergio Perosa (born 27 November 1933 in Chioggia, Italy) is an Italian linguist, translator, Anglicist, and literary critic. He is Professor Emeritus at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, where he taught English and Anglo-American literature from 1958 until 2003.
Academic Career
Perosa earned his degree in foreign languages and literature at Ca' Foscari in 1957, followed by specialization at Princeton University and the Indiana School of Letters (1957–1958), where he conducted research on unpublished manuscripts of F. Scott Fitzgerald. He became a lecturer in English language and literature at Ca' Foscari in 1957–58, taught at the University of Trieste from 1961, obtained his libera docenza in 1963, and won the competition for the chair of Anglo-American language and literature at Ca' Foscari in 1967, a position he held until 2003. He served as Dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures (1987–1990) and directed the Department of Anglo-American and Ibero-American Studies as well as the PhD program in English Studies.
He held numerous visiting academic positions, including Fulbright Fellow (1957–58), Harvard International Seminar Fellow (1964), ACLS Fellow (1970–71), Visiting Professor of English at Princeton University (1974–75), and multiple visiting professorships at New York University (1978, 1984, 1991, 1993, 1996, 1999, 2001).
Scholarship and Publications
Perosa is best known for his work on Henry James (with nearly one hundred publications), F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Shakespeare (of whom he translated ten plays), Virginia Woolf, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson. His major monographs include:
- L'arte di F. Scott Fitzgerald (1961; English edition: The Art of F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1965)
- Storia del teatro americano (1982)
- Teorie inglesi del romanzo 1700–1900 (1983)
- Teorie americane del romanzo 1800–1900 (1986)
- Henry James e Shakespeare (2010)
- Studies in Henry James (2013)
- Il Veneto di Shakespeare (2018)
- Venice-Manhattan and the Routes of the World. A Memoir (2020)
He co-directed the bilingual Tutto Shakespeare edition published by Garzanti (40 volumes, 1993–2000) and translated eight to ten of Shakespeare's plays into Italian.
Journalism and Other Roles
Perosa was a contributor to the Corriere della Sera from 1969 to 2014, writing over five hundred articles. He also contributed to the New York Times Book Review. He served as President of the Ateneo Veneto (1979–83) and of the European Association for American Studies (EAAS, 1979–81). He was a member of the jury of the Grinzane Cavour Prize (1982–2003) and of other literary prizes. He is a member of the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, the Accademia Olimpica, and the P.E.N. Club.
Awards and Recognition
In 2019, Perosa won the Brunacci-Monselice Prize for contributions to Veneto civilization for his book Il Veneto di Shakespeare. In 2023, the Cassamarca foundation in Treviso established the biennial Sergio Perosa Prize in English Studies in his honor.
