The prize will be presented in the Italian town of Pescara, the former home of the author and screenwriter Ennio Flaiano.
József Pál, who is the head of the Italian Studies Department at the University of Szeged, won the prize for his monograph Dante. Word, Symbo and Realism in the Middle Ages.
Pál, a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, studied at the University of Szeged, La Sapienza in Rome and Paris-Ill and the Sorbonne-Nouvelle. He has lectured at some of Europe?s biggest universities as well at schools in the United States, Canada and Japan.
Pál was the scientific director of the Hungarian Academy in Rome between 1994 and 1998. He headed the Hungarian Monuments in Italy national research and development programme there.
In addition to being a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, he has served on the Hungarian Accreditation Committee and the National Scientific Research Foundation. He is the chariman of the Szeged Doctoral Council of the Faculty of Arts and heads the Szeged Italian Cultural Centre. Pál is also an honourary consul of the Republic of Italy.
The Premio Flaiano was established in 1973 to honour Flaiano, a colleague of the directors Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni, and a contributor to the publications Oggi, Il Mondo and Corriere della Sera.
Source : Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
