Research

Professor Corbett has two principal areas of research: theology and the arts (with specialisms in Dante studies, sacred music, and theological aesthetics) and systematic and historical theology (with specialisms in medieval theology, Aquinas’ theology and its influence, and Catholic theology).

For the calendar year 2024, he holds a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship for a research project entitled “Theologian-Poet: Dante’s Beatrice, and the Beauty of the Christian Faith’, in which he is retrieving the purely allegorical interpretations of Beatrice, as well as the sophisticated theological readings of Dante’s autobiographical works – the Vita Nova, the Convivio, and the Commedia – by principally Catholic and clerical scholars in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He is also reappraising the relationship between Aquinas’s and Dante’s works.

Recent Publications:

Books (Monographs and Edited Volumes)
Journal Articles
Book Chapters
  • (and James MacMillan), ‘Tradition, Innovation, and Beauty in Sacred Music for Liturgy: A Theological and Compositional Perspective’, in The Oxford Handbook of Music and Christian Theology, ed. Steve Guthrie and Bennett Zon, 5 volumes, II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
  • ‘Creativity, Freedom, and the Artist’s Vocation’, in T&T Clark Handbook of Theology and the Arts, ed. Imogen Adkins and Stephen Garrett (T&T Clark, forthcoming).
  • ‘Purgatorio III & IV: Peraldus’s De Acedia, Dante’s Ante-Purgatory, and the Sub-vices of Sloth’, 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).
  • ‘Purgatorio XIX’, in Lectura Dantis Andreapolitana, ed. by Claudia Rossignoli and Robert Wilson (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, forthcoming).
  • ‘Introduction’, in Pierre Mandonnet, Dante the Theologian, ed. and trans. by George Corbett and Patricia Kelly (Turnhout: Brepols, Studia Traditionis Theologiae, 2025)
  • ‘Scholarly Approaches to Dante’s Philosophy and Theology (1921-2021): Kenelm Foster and a Cantabrigian Perspective’, in Now Feed Yourself: Anglo-American and Italian Scholarship on Dante, ed. by Zygmunt G. Baranski et al. (Oxford: Legenda, 2024), pp. 231-53.
  • (and Sarah Moreman), ‘Introduction’, in‘Music and Spirituality: Theological Approaches, Empirical Methods, and Christian Worship, ed. by George Corbett and Sarah Moerman (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2024), pp. 1-11.
  • ‘Dante’s Other-wordly Surprises and This-worldly Polemic’, in Imagining the Medieval Afterlife, ed. by R.M. Pollard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 286-302.
  • ‘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.
  • (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.

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