It is with sadness that the College shares the news that Professor Emeritus of English A. M. Cinquemani passed away at his home on Sunday, Dec. 18, 2022. He was 84.
Professor Cinquemani taught in the English Department for 40 years, from 1962 until his retirement in 2002, and returned to teach occasional courses for the department through 2006.
Anthony Michael Cinquemani (known as Tony to family, friends, and colleagues) was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1938 and was the first in his family to complete high school and to continue on to college. He attended Brooklyn Technical High School, received his B.A. in English Literature from Queens College, and earned his M.A. and PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
A scholar of John Milton and specialist in 17th century English and European literature, Cinquemani also taught courses at New Paltz on the development of the English language and the Bible. He especially delighted in poetry, particularly the works of Dante, Petrarca, Donne, Herbert, Milton, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. He was deeply connected to his Sicilian heritage and maintained an abiding interest in Italian culture, literature, and history.
A published obituary notes that “his conversation, whether in the classroom or at home, was suffused with his genuine love of literature, language, and analysis, and he had a deep intellectual generosity: he was always ready to help his students, his own children, and his grandchildren with their academic work.”
Cinquemani published numerous articles and wrote and contributed to several books, among them a notable monograph on the surprising but significant influence of Italian literary critics on Milton (Glad to Go for a Feast: Milton, Buonmattei, and the Florentine Accademici [1998]) and an English translation of the Sicilian ballad “La Barunissa di Carini.” He participated in several prestigious National Endowment of the Humanities seminars, studying literature with distinguished colleagues and friends at UCLA, Stanford, the University of Arizona at Tucson, Yale, and Princeton.
The obituary adds that Cinquemani’s family “will remember him for his humor and wit, his sentimental nature, his genuine intellectual curiosity, his faith, the stories of his youth, his Sunday bagels, and his unfailing warmth.”
A funeral Mass will be held at Saint Christopher’s Church in Red Hook, New York, on Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2022, at 10:30 a.m. Arrangements are under the direction of Burnett & White Funeral Home, 7461 S. Broadway, Red Hook, New York.
