Professor Michael Allen FBA

Renaissance philosophy, particularly the Platonism of Marsilio Ficino & Pica della Mirandola; Renaissance poetry, magic, mythology, iconography & hermeneutics; Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare.
Fellow type
International Fellow
Year elected
2012
Year of death
2024
Subjects
Literature

Summary

Michael J. B. Allen is a Distinguished Research Professor of English and Italian Renaissance Studies at UCLA where he has taught since 1970. He is the former Director of UCL's Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies; past Editor of Renaissance Quarterly; and past President of the Renaissance Society of America. His honours include Italy's Commendatore decoration in 2007 and the Premio Internazionale Galileo Galilei in 2008 for his work on Florentine Platonism. His primary interests are in Renaissance philosophy, drama, poetry, magic, mythology, iconography & hermeneutics; and more especially in the Platonism of Marsilio Ficino & Pico della Mirandola.

Principal Publications 1989: Icastes: Marsilio Ficino's Interpretation of Plato's Sophist. University of California Press (UCP) 1994: Nuptial Arithmetic: Marsilio Ficino's Commentary on the Fatal Number in Book VIII of Plato's Republic. UCP 1998: Synoptic Art: Marsilio Ficino on the History of Platonic Interpretation. Olschki Press 2001-2006; Marsilio Ficino: Platonic Theology, 6 vols. with James Hankins. Harvard University Press (HUP). 2008: Marsilio Ficino: Commentaries on the Phaedrus and Ion. HUP 2015: Marsilio Ficino: Commentaries on the Mystical Theology and the Divine Names of Dionysius the Areopagite, 2 vols. HUP.

Last post

University of California, Los Angeles Distinguished Professor Emeritus

Past appointments

University of California, Los Angeles Distinguished Professor Emeritus

2012 -

University of California, Los Angeles Professor

1970 - 2012

Other Fellows of the British Academy

Professor James Raven FBA

British, western European and colonial literary, bibliographical and cultural studies; reading, library, and book trade history, the history of the novel, comparative global bibliography, Scandinavian studies.

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Professor Andreas Xavier Schönle FBA

Eighteenth and nineteenth-century Russian literature and culture; the design, organization, and meanings of time and space in Russia; the Europeanization of the Russian elite and its transnational practices

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Professor Nick Boyle FBA

German literature and philosophy from 1700 to the present, particularly with reference to Goethe. Theological aspects of contemporary politics

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