University of Kent

Department Member, Comparative Literature

Other Affiliations: Università degli Studi di Parma (Italy), Lingue Straniere (Foreign Languages)

Assistant Lecturer in Italian

Thesis Title: Representation and Depiction of Intimate Suffering in the Narratives of Elsa Morante, Alberto Asor Rosa and Esther Tusquets

About

I graduated in Civiltà e Lingue Straniere Moderne (Foreign Languages and Cultures) at the University of Parma (Italy) in 2007. I specialised in English and Spanish languages and literatures and discussed a thesis entitled 'Christianity and Paganism in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales'.
Subsequently I studied for a Diploma in Humanities at the University of Kent, followed by an MA in Comparative Literature, focusing on the Italian and Spanish literatures of the nineteenth century, political propaganda and literary theory. My MA thesis entitled: 'Loneliness as cause and solution to human distress in Luciérnagas by Ana Marìa Matute and Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno by Italo Calvino' studies the double role loneliness may acquire in individuals and how this is reflected in literarure.

I am currently a PhD student in Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Kent (UK) and my research deals with the representation of suffering in post-Fascist and contemporary Spanish and Italian Literatures.
The aim of my research is to explore the process according to which individuals who experienced the periods of the totalitarian regimes deal with suffering by looking at some examples of Spanish and Italian narrative literatures. The research develops three perspectives: the one of the works produced in contemporary times that look back to the years of the regimes focusing on Habíamos ganado la guerra (2007) by Esther Tusquets and L’Alba di un Nuovo Mondo (2002) by Alberto Asor Rosa; the one of works produced after a few decades from the collapse of the fascist regimes, concentrating on Con la miel en los labios (1997) by Esther Tusquets and La Storia (1974) by Elsa Morante and finally the one of the works produced right after the end of the dictatorial regimes, concentrating on L’Isola di Arturo (1957) by Elsa Morante and El amor  es un juego solitario (1979) by Esther Tusquets.
In the research I introduce two concepts: ‘implicit’ and ‘explicit suffering’. I define ‘explicit suffering’ as the way individuals explicitly become aware of their experiences and deal with them. ‘Implicit suffering’, on the other hand, is defined as the characteristics of those who are not totally conscious of their distress but manifest it indirectly through their behaviours.  Furthermore, this study sheds light upon the different stylistic choices authors make in order to convey these two perspectives in works which belong to different genres: testimonial, fictional and on those which present combinations of both. This allows us to consider retrospectively the evolution of the authors’ literary perspective from their implicit idea of distress to a more explicit one passing through an intermediate and hybrid phase.

My research interests include: Italian and Spanish Fascism, the representation of the Italian Resistance and the Spanish Civil War in literature and visual arts, questions of identity during the Italian and Spanish regimes, gender violence and sexual discrimination and repression in literatures.


I regularly publish short-stories in Italian.

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