worked at the universities of Urbino, Salerno and Perugia as a Professor of Italian and Humanist Literature. His expertise on the life and work of Petrarch is legendary. He wrote, among other things, a Vita of Petrarch (1987 and 2004, also translated in French and Portuguese), edited his poetic oeuvre Il Canzoniere (1996 and 2004), his extensive correspondence (the Familiares and Seniles), the Secretum (2000) and finally the historical works De viris illustribus and De gestis Cesaris, of which an Italian translation appeared recently (2007). Among his other books are studies on Dante, Leopardi and Machiavelli, such as the essay Niccolò Machiavelli: La fenomenologia del potere (1980) and the impressive biography Machiavelli rivoluzionario (2003), that also appeared in French. Last year Dotti’s massive Storia della letteratura italiana came out. He currently works on the first complete Italian translation of John of Salisbury’s Policratus.