The weakening of the Italian Department continued this month with the resignation of a newly-appointed instructor, and the expiration of the terms of another instructor and a visiting lecturer, it was learned yesterday. The Department will lose its most distinguished member, Charles S. Singleton, professor of Italian, at the end of the month.

The resignation was tendered by Nicholas J. Perella 4G, a Teaching Fellow who was recently appointed instructor in the Department beginning in the Fall. Shortly after he was appointed, Perella resigned from the University to accept an offer to teach at the University of California. Perella will receive his Ph.D. at Commencement next week.

Also accepting an appointment to the University of California is Clorinda V. Ferruolo, Instructor in Italian, who will head the Italian Department at the Berkeley campus. Ferruolo's instructorship expires this month.

The third departing scholar is Rocco Montano, visiting Lecturer in Italian, whose single-term appointment also ends this month. Montano, who taught two-thirds of the Italian literature courses offered this year, will return to teach in Italy.

These departures follow close upon the resignation of Singleton, probably the nation's foremost Dante scholar, announced in April. Singleton's resignation came as "a kind of protest against infringement on individual departments by the Administration," a source close to him said at the time. Singleton's departure will leave Louis F. Solona, associate professor of Romance Languages the only permanent appointee actively teaching in the Department.

Perella was a good friend of Singleton and was an assistant in his Humanities 116 course in "The Literature of the Renaissance." Perella could not be reached for comment on his resignation.

These departures in the department will be partly filled by new appointments. Yale professor Erich Auerbach, author of Mimesis, has been appointed a visiting professor to teach Singleton's former course, Italian 120, "Dante's Divina Comedia." A specialist in Renaissance literature from Columbia has been named to the instructorship vacated by Perella.