Research areas
- Relationship between literature and economics;
- Medieval Italian literature, especially in connection to Romance literatures;
- Dante studies, medieval lyric, and medieval and early modern chivalric literature;
- Periodization, especially the definition of Middle Ages and Modernity.
I am a Romance philologist and comparative literary scholar of medieval European literature. I envision medieval Italian fiction, my area of expertise, in close, continuous, and generative connection with different Romance languages and with early modern and modern literatures. My research challenges the entrenched and reductive portrayal of the Middle Ages as pre-, un-, or anti-modern: I am interested in the ways in which scholars, authors, and readers created the category of “Middle Ages” as well as in the making of the concepts of modernity and progress, and how literature has contributed to shaping such categories.
My main research projects currently investigate the relationship between literature and economics, with a special focus on medieval Italy and France. I am interested in the porous zones in which literature and economics overlap and interact, and the ways in which fiction creates possible worlds that refashion historical realities.
