Giacomo Berchi is a scholar of Dante and epic poetry. His research focuses on the relationship between literature and cosmology, early modern epics, and Dante’s presence across literatures and languages.
His first book project, tentatively entitled Chaos, explores literary scenes of oceanic navigations as places of cosmological thinking in the early modern period and beyond. Centered in Dante, and including classical, early modern, and modern works such as Homer’s Odyssey, Luís de Camões’ Os Lusíadas, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Derek Walcott’s Omeros among others, this project argues that literary navigations progressively reveal a shift in the perception of chaos— from an initial state to an integral structure of the cosmos, symbolized by the ocean.
