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Allen Mandelbaum was an American professor of Italian literature, poet, and translator. He was the W. R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Humanities at Wake Forest University. He was born in Albany, New York in 1926. His translation of the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri appeared between 1980 and 1984; they were published by the University of California Press and supported by the notable Dante scholar Irma Brandeis. He subsequently acted as general editor of the California Lectura Dantis, a collection of essays on the Comedy; two volumes, on the Inferno and Purgatorio, have been published.
Mandelbaum received the 1973 National Book Award in category Translation for Virgil's Aeneid. He is also the recipient of the Order of Merit from the Republic of Italy, the Premio Mondello, the Premio Leonardo, the Premio Biella, the Premio Lerici-Pea, the Premio Montale at the Montale Centenary in Rome, and the Circe-Sabaudia Award.
In 2000, Mandelbaum traveled to Florence, Italy, for the 735th anniversary of Dante's birth, and was awarded the Gold Medal of Honor of the City of Florence, in honor of his translation of the Divine Comedy. In 2003, he was awarded The Presidential Prize for Translation from the President of Italy, and received Italy's highest award, the Presidential Cross of the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity. He died in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 2011.
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