Paolo Cherchi, a scholar of Romance philology whose work shaped the study of medieval and early modern literature, died April 4 in Chicago, surrounded by family.
He was a few weeks shy of his 89th birthday. A member of the University of Chicago community for nearly four decades, Cherchi was known for his prodigious scholarship and his expansive intellectual generosity.
Cherchi taught Romance philology as well as Italian and Spanish literature in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures from 1965 until his retirement in 2003. He published more than 600 works on texts ranging from the medieval period to the 18th century, while also engaging modern authors. A true Romanist, his scholarship ranged across Italian, Spanish, Latin, Provençal and Catalan traditions, often tracing how literary motifs traveled across time, language and genre.
Though frequently described as a figure of great erudition, Cherchi himself resisted the label. His colleague Justin Steinberg, William H. Colvin Professor of Italian Literature, recalled that Cherchi saw erudition as a “cold way of looking at what knowledge is.”
Instead, Cherchi believed scholarship began with a problem, something unresolved in a text. His inquiry unfolded from that moment in what Steinberg described as a “golden chain of textual associations” that defined Cherchi’s work.
For Cherchi, the power of the humanities lay in addressing existential questions, rather than using texts to illustrate preexisting ideas. He hoped to instill this same intellectual hunger in others.
“I never left a conversation with him without wanting to read three or four things,” Steinberg recalled.
Cherchi’s learning extended well beyond his own fields.
“He was intellectually extremely strong in his field, but also cultivated a remarkable curiosity for other subjects,” recalled his son, Marcello Cherchi, PhD’97, a neurologist at UChicago Medicine. “He was always interested in what I was doing, no matter how distant it was from his knowledge.”
Marcello also remembered his father’s rigorous work ethic, “which I still try to live up to.”
Cherchi’s books were widely celebrated and reshaped how scholars understand literary borrowing and invention. His studies of courtly love, Renaissance rewriting and onestade, a concept often translated as a form of ethical or social virtue, demonstrated how literary history must engage the complexity of tradition.
As one colleague noted, Cherchi’s work revealed that even canonical masterpieces could only be understood through deep attention to neglected texts, forgotten ideas and the layered evolution of meaning.
“He connected the broken link between modern cultural history and older, enduring forms of knowledge,” said Mauricio Tenorio, Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of History. “Incredibly generous with his time and erudition in many languages, Paolo taught me both the evolution of Latin into vernaculars and the politics of philology. I will miss his generous help, his wonderful smile.”
A life in scholarship across languages and worlds
Cherchi was born May 10, 1937, in Oschiri, Sardinia. He received his laurea in lettere from the University of Cagliari in 1962 and his Ph.D. in Romance languages from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1966. He began teaching at UChicago in 1965.
Cherchi served on the editorial board of Modern Philology from 1973 to 1988; following his retirement, the journal published a tribute issue in his honor. In his later career, he also taught at the University of Ferrara in Italy, where he joined the faculty per chiara fama, an honor reserved for scholars of exceptional distinction.
A committed institutional thinker, Cherchi built enduring relationships with scholars and institutions in Italy, including exchanges with the University of Rome La Sapienza, that brought students and faculty into sustained intellectual dialogue. These efforts helped position Chicago as a hub for Romance philology and Italian studies.
A teacher, mentor and ‘walking library’
Students and colleagues alike described him as a “biblioteca ambulante”—a walking library—who keenly shared his knowledge with others.
Elusive problems were Cherchi’s calling, according to his colleague Elissa Weaver, professor emerita of Italian literature, who noted that “he showed students not only how to identify them, but how to pursue them in original research and to publish their findings.”
Among fellow Romanists, he was known for his generosity, his delight in repartee and his encouragement of younger scholars, particularly women entering a male-dominated field. In a tribute published in Modern Philology, William R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Service Professor Emerita Rebecca West wrote: “As a very green Italianist, I appreciated his initial belief in me and, as a more mature one, his constant support of my work, and his encouragement to do more.”
For Cherchi, mentorship and teaching were inseparable from scholarship. In his classrooms, especially his renowned Dante seminars, he lectured without notes for hours, drawing connections across Arabic philosophy, medieval science, biblical exegesis and vernacular poetry.
In the Susan and Donald Mazzoni Seminars, which he founded within the Italian doctoral program, Cherchi worked closely with graduate students on original research projects, often helping to transform seminar collaborations into published volumes.
Former student Lynn Westwater, PhD’03, professor of Italian at George Washington University, recalled Saturday mornings with Cherchi in the Regenstein Library rare book room, where he patiently guided students through intricate philological detective work tracing the unattributed reuse and transformation of sources in Renaissance texts. The resulting essays not only helped students secure academic positions but trained them in methods they built on decades later.
“He had more ideas than time,” recalled Meredith K. Ray, PhD’02, who is now Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Italian Studies at Johns Hopkins University. “Instead of keeping them, he gave them to us.”
Outside formal settings, Cherchi cultivated community with equal dedication, whether dropping off students at the Newberry Library, connecting them with scholars in Italy or conducting conversations over meals.
“He had a joke for every situation,” Westwater recalled, remembering a playfulness mixed with profound pride in his students’ accomplishments. In one message to her, Cherchi wrote that it gave him “so much joy” to help students with their research and “so much satisfaction” to see their careers flourish.
Cherchi’s scholarly output remained vibrant through his later years, publishing new work well into his 80s and receiving major honors, including election to the Academy of the Lincei, Italy’s oldest and most prestigious scientific academy in 2016, and an honorary doctorate from the Sapienza University of Rome in 2024.
Cherchi is survived by his wife, Judy Cherchi, his son Marcello and his grandchildren. A memorial service is planned by the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures for spring 2027.
—This article was originally published on the Division of the Arts & Humanities website.
