Research

Professor Corbett has two principal areas of research: Theology and the Arts (with a focus on the  theologian-poet Dante Alighieri) and Systematic and Historical Theology (with a focus on Aquinas’ theology and its influence, and on Catholic theology).

Recent Publications:

Monographs

• DANTE’S CHRISTIAN ETHICS: Purgatory and Its Moral Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), ‘Winner, 2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title’.

[see here for an academic presentation about the book, and here for a more informal interview with ITIA alumna Joy Clarkson]

• DANTE AND EPICURUS: A Dualistic Vision of Secular and Spiritual Fulfilment (Oxford: Legenda and MHRA, 2013).

Edited Books

• Mandonnet: Dante the Theologian, ed. and trans., with commentary and notes, by George Corbett and Patricia Kelly (Turnhout: Brepols, Studia Traditionis Theologiae, forthcoming)
• Annunciations: Sacred Music for the Twenty-First Century, ed. by George Corbett (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2019).
• Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy, ed. by George Corbett and Heather Webb, vol. 3 (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2017).
• Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy, ed. by George Corbett and Heather Webb, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2016).
• Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy, ed. by George Corbett and Heather Webb, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2015).

Journal Articles

• ‘The Invention of Ante-Purgatory: Sluggards and Excommunicates in Dante’s “Hopeful Limbo” (Purgatorio i-ix)’, LE TRE CORONE: Revista internazionale di studi su Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio (2023), forthcoming.
• ‘Thomists at War: Pierre Mandonnet, Etienne Gilson, and a Civil War in Aquinas and Dante Studies (1879-2021)’, Nova et Vetera 20.4 (Fall 2022), forthcoming.  
• ‘Interpreting Dante’s “Commedia”: Competing Perspectives’, Bibliotheca Dantesca, 4 (2021), 1-32.
• ‘Dante, Epicuro, e Firenze: Una rilettura contestuale del dialogo fra Cavalcante e Dante (Inf. X 52-72)’, Studi danteschi 83 (2018), 55-71.
• ‘TheoArtistry, and a Contemporary Perspective on Composing Sacred Choral Music’, Religions 2018, 9 (1), 7 (Special Issue: Music: Its Theologies and Spiritualities – A Global Perspective), doi: 10.3390/rel9010007.
• ‘Parallel Exempla: A Theological Reading of the Terrace of Pride (Purgatorio x-xii)’, LE TRE CORONE: Revista internazionale di studi su Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio (2017), 73-96.
• ‘Peraldus and Aquinas: Two Dominican Approaches to the Seven Capital Vices in the Christian Moral Life’, The Thomist 79 (2015), 383-406.
• ‘MacIntyre, Dante and Modernity’, New Blackfriars, 96 (2015), 345-60.
• ‘The Christian Ethics of Dante’s Purgatory’, Medium Ævum, 83:2 (2014), 266-87
• (and Heather Webb), ‘Three Paths in One Journey: A Vertical Reading of Inf. I, Purg., I, Par. I’, L’Alighieri 41 (2013), 63-81.

Book Chapters

• ‘Dante’s Philosophical and Theological Culture’, in Themes, Traditions, and Cultures in Dante, ed. by Zygmunt G. Baranski et al. (Oxford: Legenda, forthcoming).
• ‘Liturgy: Tradition and Innovation’, in The Oxford Handbook of Music and Christian Theology, ed. Steve Guthrie and Bennett Zon, 5 volumes, II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
• ‘Creativity’, in T&T Clark Companion to Theology and the Arts, ed. Imogen Adkins and Stephen Garrett (T&T Clark, forthcoming).
• ‘Purgatorio III & IV’, in ‘A piè del monte’: Rivisitando l’antipurgatorio, ed. Zygmunt G. Barański and Theodore J. Cachey Jr (Rome: Salerno, forthcoming).
• ‘Paradiso XXX’, in Lectura Dantis Andreapolitana, ed. by Claudia Rossignoli and Robert Wilson (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, forthcoming).
• ‘Mary as a Model for Creative People: Establishing Theologian-Composer Partnerships with James MacMillan’, in Sacred Music for the Twenty-First Century, ed. by George Corbett (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2019), pp. 31-43.
• ‘Introduction’, in Annunciations: Sacred Music for the Twenty-First Century, ed. by George Corbett (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2019), pp. 1-6.
• ‘Moral Structure’, in The Cambridge Companion to Dante’s ‘Commedia’, ed. by Zygmunt G. Barański and Simon Gilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 61-78.
• ‘Dante’s Other-wordly Surprises and This-worldly Polemic’, in Envisioning the Medieval Afterlife, ed. by R.M. Pollard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 286-302.
• ‘Purgatorio XIX’, in Lectura Dantis Andreapolitana, ed. by Claudia Rossignoli and Robert Wilson (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, forthcoming).
• (and Heather Webb), ‘Introduction’, in George Corbett and Heather Webb (eds), Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2017), pp. 1-9.
• (and Heather Webb), ‘Introduction’, in George Corbett and Heather Webb (eds), Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2016), vol. 2, pp. 1-12.
• ‘Pagan Dawn of a Christian Vision’, in George Corbett and Heather Webb (eds), Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2015), vol. 1, pp. 13-23.
• (and Heather Webb), ‘Introduction’, in George Corbett and Heather Webb (eds), Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2015), vol. 1, pp. 1-11.
• (and Robin Kirkpatrick), ‘ “E lascia pur grattar…”: Language, Narrative and Ethics in the Commedia’, in Dante the Lyrical and Ethical Poet. Dante etico e lirico,ed. by Zygmunt G. Barański and Martin McLaughlin (Oxford: Legenda, 2010), pp. 56-69.
• ‘Auden’s Imaginary Music’, in New Perspectives in British Cultural History,ed. by Rosalind Crone, David Gange and Katy Jones (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007), pp. 232-43.