Dr Elena Lombardi

• Email: Elena.Lombardi@bris.ac.uk
• Tel: (0117) 92 87589 
• Research Publications

Elena Lombardi graduated from the University of Pavia (1992) with a thesis in modern philology, a preparatory study for the critical edition of Ugo Foscolo’s Lettere Scritte dall’Inghilterra. She completed her education at New York University, where she received her MA (1998) with a thesis on Gabriele D’Annunzio’s Romanzi della Rosa in the context of the European novel, and Ph.D. (2000) with a dissertation on some aspects of the medieval theory of language in connection with the theme of desire. She was Assistant Professor in Italian Studies at McGillUniversity (Montrčal (Canada) before being appointed at Bristol in 2006.

Research Interests

Her main area of research is Dante and the Middle Ages. Her book explores the interrelations between the notions of syntax and desire in medieval theology (Augustine), grammar (Modistae) and poetry (Dante). She has also published on early Italian poetry (Guido Cavalcanti, the Sicilian School Petrarca). Other areas of interest are the Renaissance (with particular emphasis on the theme of intertextuality), and the turn-of-the-century European novel, which she interprets in the in the light of a structure of conversion narrative deriving from the intersection of an Augustinian and a Freudian model of conversion. Elena Lombardi is member of the research project “Making Publics: Media, Markets, and Association in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700”.

She is currently working on a book project on Inferno 5, which explores theories of love and desire in Dante and the Middle Ages.

Selected publications

Books

The Syntax of Desire. Language and Love in Augustine, the Modistae and Dante. (Toronto: University of Toronto  Press, 2007)

Articles/Chapters

Plurilingualism sub specie aeternitatis.  Language/s in Dante's Commedia' In Dante's Plurilingualism.  Authority, Vulgarization, Subjectivity, M. Gragnolati, S. Fortuna and J. Trabant eds (Legenda: Forthcoming, 2010)

"Petrarch's Canzoniere between the medieval and modern notion of desire" in Early Medievalism (Leiden: Brill, 2009)

“Scar narrative – sore narrative. The liquidation of realism in D’Annunzio’s Giovanni Episcopo and l’Innocente” Quaderni d’Italianistica 27:2 (Fall 2006): 107-38

“Traduzione e riscrittura: da Folchetto al Notaio.” The Italianist 24 (2004) : 5-19

“The Grammar of Vision in Guido Cavalcanti” in Guido Cavalcanti tra i suoi lettori, M.L. Ardizzone ed.(Florence: Cadmo, 2003), 83-92

“Per l’edizione critica delle Lettere scritte dall'Inghilterra” Studi di Filologia Italiana, LIII (1995), 249-344

Lettere scritte dall'Inghilterra in Ugo Foscolo, Opere, II (Turin: Einaudi-Gallimard, La Plčiade, 1995), 447-502

Top