Dr Stefano Jossa - Reader in Italian

I teach Italian culture and literature, spanning from the foundational course on the Italian Three Crowns in the Middle Ages (Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio) to the construction of Italian national icons in post-Unification literature (from Pinocchio to The Leopard). Both courses are offered at first-year level as an introduction to Italian history, identity, and character.

My teaching in second and final year is more closely related to my research in the early modern period and focuses on art and culture in Renaissance Florence (Masaccio, Botticelli, Leonardo, and Michelangelo), Dante's Divine Comedy and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. I also teach the section on Boccaccio's Decameron on the MA in Medieval Narratives. My approach blends close-reading of texts, historical contextualization and processes of appropriation and adaptation in contemporary pop culture. I tend to incorporate plenty of online resources into my teaching in order to enhance the students' understanding of the presence of the past in shaping our contemporary present.

Most of my teaching is research-driven, based on my own reading of Italian literary classics. In my book Un paese senza eroi, I have explored the interaction between literary heroes and national identity in pre- and post-Unification Italy, from Foscolo's Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis to Camilleri's invention of Inspector Montalbano. In Ariosto, the Orlando Furioso and English Culture, co-edited with J. E. Everson and A. Hiscock, I have addressed the long duration of Ariosto's presence in the English-speaking world, contributing the introduction and the final chapter on C.S. Lewis and Beckett readers of the Orlando Furioso, with an influence reaching J.R.R. Tolkien and J.K. Rowling.

My most recent book, La piu` bella del mondo, is a broad exploration of Italian language and literature, from Dante to contemporary media, addressed to a general audience, but also useful for language, poetry and translation teaching.

I have recently co-edited, with S. Alessi, a special issue of The Italianist on the contribution of women heroines to the construction of Italian nation and character.

I am the recipient of a BA/Leverhulme SRG to investigate the Ridolfi collection of letters at the Archives at RHUL (2020-2022). This is the largest and most valuable collection of letters form the Italian Renaissance in a UK University library and offers scope for a deeper understanding of family networks and social relationships at the time.

More information about my academic activity is available via PURE

E-mail: Stefano.Jossa@rhul.ac.uk

Expertise

Petrarch and Petrarchism

Ariosto's Orlando Furioso and chivalric poetry

Italian Renaissance

Italian Nation and Nationhood

The Legacy of Italian Classics in Contemporary Culture

Media presence

I am a regular contributor to the Italian daily il manifesto and the Italian blog doppiozero.

My online presence includes the following blogs and videos in English:

La piu bella del mondo - The Most Beautiful in the World: a Series at the Italian Cultural Institute in London