Nuccio Ordine

Nuccio Ordine is a professor of Italian literature at the University of Calabria and has been a visiting professor at Yale University, Paris IV-Sorbonne, the CESR in Tours, the IEA in Paris, the Warburg Institute, and the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, among others. He is a member of the Légion d'Honneur of the French Republic, an Honorary Member of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an internationally renowned specialist in Renaissance studies, and a scholar and disseminator of the work of Giordano Bruno, who features in many of his books. As an author, he achieved widespread media attention with the publication of La utilidad de l'inútil [The Utility of Useless Things] (Quaderns Crema, 2013), a text in which he defends the importance of the humanities, and which became a best seller in Italy, France and Spain. In Clàssics per a la vida [Classics for Life] (Quaderns Crema, 2017) he offers commentary on some 50 books that, in his opinion, are essential readings to foster a critical spirit. He recently published Tres coronas para un rey [Three Crowns for a King] (Acantilado, 2022) in Spanish. Ordine has also created and directed collections of classics for prestigious publishers, such as the Italian Bompiani and the French Les Belles Lettres, and he is a regular contributor to the cultural sections of the newspapers Corriere della Sera and El País.