What are you going to work with at IFIKK?
I have been working at IFIKK since January 2022 as a postdoctoral research fellow in Classical Reception. In this role, I am a member of the research group “New Signs of Antiquity: the Uses of Latin in the Public Culture of Fascist Italy”, which is led by Prof. Han Lamers and financially supported by the Norwegian Research Council. The project deals with the uses, misuses, and abuses of Latin as a language of power and supremacy in Fascist Italy, as well as with the assumptions, expectations and misconceptions revolving (also today) around the association between Latin and Fascism. My individual research focusses on the figure of Gabriele d’Annunzio (1863-1938), the most successful poet in Italy at the time, but also hero of war and military leader in the aftermath of First World War. My main hypothesis sees in d’Annunzio the first to propose a systematic use of Latin as a medium for propaganda, at the dawn of the so-called “mass audience”.
Can you tell us a bit about your research interests?
My research interests converge at the confluence between Classics, which have been the bulk of my education since secondary school, and European Comparative Literature, which I discovered later in my university years. I hold a D.Phil. (Phd) from the University of Oxford, with a dissertation centred on the role of Classics in a selection of Sir Walter Scott’s Jacobite Novels. In this work, I have investigated classical allusions and reusages in the fabric of Scott’s prose fiction, by emphasising the role that Graeco-Roman textual material plays in negotiating, often in a provocative, revisionist way, the political union between England and Scotland.
What do you like to do in your spare time?
I like reading, both fiction and non-fiction – I must confess I still have a preference for paper editions, when reading in my spare time. Likewise, I am still one of those who want to watch a movie at the cinema for the first time. On the other hand, however, I like listening to podcasts and audiobooks. I also like visiting museums and exhibitions and since my arrival in Norway, I have discovered the healing power of walking in the woods.