Robert M. Durling was an American scholar and translator, known for his translations of Petrarch's Rime Sparse and (with ) of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. He was professor emeritus of Italian and English literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He died on May 21, 2015. Durling was a student of Charles S. Singleton and took his course on the Comedy, a class he said "literally changed my life."