Thomas Goddard Bergin OBE (November 17, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American scholar of Italian literature,[1] who was "noted particularly for his research on Dante's Divine Comedy and for its translation".

[4][5] He is recognized as an authority on Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, and the Provençal troubadours, as well as modern Italian writers, including Alberto Moravia, Salvatore Quasimodo, Giovanni Verga, and Giambattista Vico.

[1][6][7] Bartlett Giamatti referred to him as the “grand statesman of Italian scholarship in America.”[8][9] Among his translations are Dante's Divine Comedy (1948),[2] which was published in three-volumes with illustrations by Leonard Baskin, Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince (1947) and Giambattista Vico's New Science (1946) with Max Fisch.

"[14][15] Thomas G. Bergin writes that The Divine Comedy "is everything: a personal confession, a vast love lyric, an encyclopedia of the knowledge of the Middle Ages ... and of course quite simply an absorbing narrative.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita.

Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte che nel pensier rinova la paura!

The story of his escape from home, up until the gangplanks are drawn up and the ship sets sail, as he relates it in the essay, "Endings and Beginnings", is a tale of suspense.

As Master, he also hosted The Timothy Dwight Chubb Fellowship visits of notable people from various walks of life, including the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951 Clement Attlee, conservative presidential candidate of 1964 Barry Goldwater, President Harry Truman, Adlai Stevenson, actor Fredric March, novelist Iris Murdoch, and future President Ronald Reagan.

[23][24] When the visit by the conservative Californian candidate, Ronald Reagan, was announced, it stirred up controversy in the political atmosphere of 1967[24]— there were those who wanted the invitation withdrawn.

[25] William F. Buckley, Jr., who is described as a "life long friend" of Bergin,[26] in spite of each man being on opposite ends of the political spectrum, weighed in on the controversy in his syndicated newspaper column.

Buckley, writing with what the Yale Daily News described as "tongue-in-cheek" referred to Bergin as "a scholar aesthete of obstinate liberalism.

For once I find it difficult to quarrel with him.”[25] Buckley was further inspired to imagine Bergin "lamenting the furor over his invitation to Reagan" with a quote from the Divine Comedy: “I cannot well report how I entered it, so full was I of slumber at that moment when I abandoned the true way.”[27][28]

In 1989, Yale established the Thomas Bergin scholarships for Italian majors, and the dining room of Timothy Dwight College was named in his honor.

During the war, Major Bergin was assigned to the headquarters of the Allied Control Commission in Italy, where he served as director of public relations from 1943 to 1946.

[2] He was survived by his wife, who has since died; two daughters, Winifred Hart, of Lexington, Virginia and Jennifer von Mayrhauser of New York; six grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren.