Nella Cotrupi

Caterina Nella Cotrupi is an Italian-born Canadian author, lawyer, scholar, and educator. She has also been a candidate for public office. Her scholarly work on Canadian literary theorist, Northrop Frye, has focused on the social function of literature and the role that metaphorical language plays in process poetics. She has written and presented on the links between process theology and process poetics.

Cotrupi's book, Northrop Frye and The Poetics of Process, was the first major work to explore how Longinian poetics, the theories of Giambattista Vico, and process thinking influenced Frye's writing. Taking her cue from Frye's notion that cultural and literary works function as the laboratory for fashioning new and hopefully, better worlds, she explores the notion that some literature does indeed function as a secular scripture, carving out a path for individual and collective moral acts.

In 2002 she delivered the keynote address to the Northrop Frye Festival titled "Process and Possibility: Northrop Frye’s Spiritual Vision".

Cotrupi was a candidate for political office in the riding of Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada, during one provincial election and one federal election.

Called to the Ontario bar in 1980, she practiced law in a Toronto legal clinic providing services to low income and immigrant groups in the 1980s and later, in the 1990s with a Toronto law firm specializing in not-for-profit and charity law. During this time she served on the board of A-Way, a Toronto-based company founded and staffed by individuals who had experienced mental health challenges.

Throughout the period of her legal practice, and more currently during her business involvements in the field of continuing professional and legal education, Nella Cotrupi has continued to teach and make presentations on subjects associated with literature and the social and moral processes literature fuels.