Reviews

“Serious critical studies of [Gaspara] Stampa’s poetry have multiplied in recent decades, but we have lacked a solid critical edition of her poetry, one based on [her sister] Cassandra’s 1554 publication rather than on [Abdelkader] Salza’s edition. Happily, Jane Tylus and Troy Tower answer this need in the book under review. […] Simply put, this book is by far the best edition of Stampa’s poetry now available in the English-speaking world and in Italy, and it should now become the standard scholarly edition”
— V. Stanley Benfell III, “Gaspara Stampa. The Complete Poems: The 1554 Edition of the “Rime,” a Bilingual Edition. Ed Troy Tower and Jane Tylus. Trans. with a commentary by Jane Tylus. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010. xxix + 444 pp. index. illus. bibl. $35. ISBN: 978-0-226-77072-7″, Renaissance Quarterly 64.2 (2011), 576-577, 576-577

Acknowledgements

“Troy Tower has been the finest research assistant imaginable, locating the most difficult texts, reviewing all of my translations and doing additional translations of his own, fact-checking every possible date, name, and event in this book, and working tirelessly over the past year to help bring this project to completion”
— Ramie Targoff, Renaissance Woman: The Life of Vittoria Colonna (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), 326

“[A]t NYU Troy Tower and Jessica Goethals [now assistant professor of Italian Studies at the University of Alabama] have been intrepid research assistants, going far beyond the call of duty in tracking down stray footnotes [and] locating esoteric journals […]; they also read the book from cover to cover in several versions and made invaluable editorial suggestions. If anyone ever has occasion to wonder whether the future of Italian studies is in good hands, they need only look to Troy and Jessica for reassurance”
— Jane Tylus, Reclaiming Catherine of Siena: Literacy, Literature and the Signs of Others (University of Chicago Press, 2009), xii-xiii

“For my own part, I would like to acknowledge the dedication and precision of Troy Tower, who has managed the preparation of the volume with grace and aplomb. Troy’s own contributions to Italian Studies are already distinguished, and I could not have imagined a better editorial partner”
— Walter Stephens, “Editors’ Preface”, in Walter Stephens, Zygmunt Barańsky, Theodore Cachey and Teresa Kennedy, eds., Tra Amici: Essays in Honor of Giuseppe Mazzotta, supplemental issue to MLN 127.1 (2012), ix-x, ix-x

“Troy Tower was an indispensable resource, as he always is, both as a second set of eyes and for compiling the back matter in record time”
— William Egginton, The Splintering of the American Mind: Identity, Inequality, and Community on Today’s College Campuses (Bloomsbury, 2018), 225

“I would like to acknowledge the expert editorial assistance and advice of Troy Tower”
— Susan Forscher Weiss, “Perfect Beauty: Echoes of Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the Poetry and Music of the Trecento”, in Federica Brunori Deigan, Francesco Ciabattoni and Stefano Giannini, eds., Tradition and the Individual Text: Essays in Honor of Pier Massimo Forni, supplemental issue to MLN 134 (2019), S167-S183, S167

“Troy Tower was a skilled picture researcher and editor”
— Cammy Brothers, Giuliano da Sangallo and the Ruins of Rome (Princeton University Press, 2022), viii

“I […] thank Troy Tower for his diligent and painstaking work on the manuscript, especially for his help with copy-editing and translations”
— Marsha Libina, Sebastiano del Piombo and the Sacred Image: Mediating the Divine in the Age of Reform (Brepols, 2022), 3

“Troy Tower worked wonders with my prose”
— Katharina Piechocki, Cartographic Humanism: The Making of Early Modern Europe (University of Chicago Press, 2019), 239

“I am grateful […] for the invaluable editorial assistance of Troy Tower”
— Andrew Hui, “Poussin’s Allegory of Ruins”, in Walter Melion and Karl Enenkel, eds., Landscape and the Visual Hermeneutics of Place, 1500-1700 (Brill, 2021), 391-421, 391

“Thanks also to […] Troy […] for his careful proofreading”
— Bernadette Wegenstein, The Cosmetic Gaze: Body Modification and the Construction of Beauty (MIT Press, 2012), vii

Above: Troy with Jane Tylus at “Performing Gaspara Stampa: An Evening of Poetry, Commentary and Song”, moderated by Virginia Cox and hosted by Stefano Albertini at NYU’s Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, 15 February 2011; still from video by i-Italy. Header: Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, MS Anglia 31 I–II, fol. 45r, transcribed and translated by Troy Tower, in Elizabeth Patton, “Four Contemporary Translations of Dorothy Arundell’s Lost English Narratives”, Philological Quarterly 95.3-4 (2016), 397-424; critical edition in preparation. Thanks to Heather Stein for website support.