Italian literature and cultural history of the Early Modern Period (Dante to Baroque); the 19th- and early 20th-century
Topics in comparative literature related to the above.
Contemporary Italian socio-cultural studies.
Having recently completed the first critical edition of Giovan Battista Marino's lyric poetry (La Lira) I am now working on completing a book on hisvast encyclopaedic poem L'Adone (provisional title: A Poem in Time. Giovan Battista Marino's Adone and the Italian Baroque). Longer term projects include work in progress on Dante and Pirandello, and a book on spectacle and performance in seventeenth-century culture. My research concentrates on the Early Modern (Late Medieval to Baroque) period, but I also have an interest in and have published on the modern period (novel and theatre) and contemporary culture. In both areas my inclinations are comparatist and inter-disciplinary (Italian's relations with other literatures; literature and science; sociology of literature etc.).
Major and most recent publications
Giovan Battista Marino, La Lira (critical edition), Turin, Edizioni RES, 2007. 3 vols, 430, 400, 432 pp. (Vol 1: 1602-1604 Rime; Vol. 2: 1614 Terza parte della Lira; Vol. 3: Uncollected verses and critical apparatus)
Prose di Giulio Cortese (critical edition), Turin, Edizioni RES, 2000. LVI, 160 pp. (with Introduction, texts, critical apparatus and notes.)
Rime di Ascanio Pignatelli (critical edition), Turin, Edizioni RES, 1996. XXXVI, 140 pp. (with Introduction, texts, critical apparatus and notes.)
Reconstructing the Past: Representations of the Fascist Era in Post-War European Culture (with G. Bartram and D. Steel). Keele University Press, 1996.
Science, Culture and Popular Belief in Renaissance Europe (with S.Pumphrey and P.L.Rossi), Manchester University Press, 1991.
'Sulla strada dell'Adone? Della Lira Parte Terza', in Marino e il Barocco. Da Napoli a Parigi...
'Celestial Discords: the Music of Dante's Paradise', Comparative Critical Studies, 5:1, 2008
'Deus nobis haec otia fecit: Marino e i mecenati', Seicento e Settecento, 2007
'Truth in the sack: L'innesto and the meaning of pregnancy', Pirandello Studies, 2006.
'The seventeenth-century stage', in The Cambridge History of Italian Theatre, ed. J. Farrell and P. Puppa (Cambridge, 2006)
'Gli affanni della cultura nella corrispondenza di Guidobaldo Benamati ad Angelico Aprosio, Aprosiana, 2002
'Marino, le streghe, il cardinale' Italian studies, 1999
'Intorno a due lettere "inglesi" del Marino, Rassegna della letteratura italiana, 1997
'Consuming the Revels: Eating as Spectacle at the Medicean Court', New Comparison, 1997
'Le scarpe della serva: Another Look at Così è se vi pare', Yearbook of the Society for Pirandello Studies, 13, 1994
The Poet's Senses: G. B. Marino's Adone and the New Science', Comparative Criticism, 1991
'Agiografie mariniane', Studi secenteschi, 1988
I was senior editor, 1992-2003, of the British Comparative Literature Association's journal New Comparison , and am now on the Editorial Board of its successor journal Comparative Critical Studies (Edinburgh University Press). For the BCLA, I have also organised and edited the proceedings of a number of major conferences and symposia. I am also a member of the Editorial Board of Seicento e Settecento.
