Lingue e Letterature Straniere

Foreign Languages and Literatures

The individual research projects of the faculty members can be found on their personal pages.

Below are the main research topics divided by linguistic and cultural area:

English Studies: The main research topics include, modernism, Victorian literature, Irish literature, the short story, the gothic, Victorian literature, travel literature, the relationship between literature and science, and collaborative writing.

Germanic Philology: The translation of the Bible and religious texts into Germanic languages; orality and writing in Anglo-Saxon and Norse poetry; the Tristan tradition in medieval Germanic literature; issues in the critical editing of Germanic texts.

French Studies: Theory and practice of epic and novel from the 17th to the 20th century; literature of the revolutionary period; the narrative and theatrical works of Marguerite Yourcenar; linguistic variations in the Francophone world.

German Studies: German language and literature from the 18th to the 21st century; language teaching. In particular, research focuses on the connections between literary texts and the history of ideas, film adaptations of literary works, language and linguistics of the historical avant-garde, and the linguistics of literary texts, especially theatrical ones.

Hispanic Studies: Spanish literature from the 15th century to the present, with philological focus (textual criticism, authorial philology); history of the Spanish early printed book; history of the language; literary translation and Spain–Italy cultural interactions; linguistic and rhetorical aspects of literary texts; essay writing and tradition, slang and the language of violence.

Slavic Studies: The main research topics include ecclesiastical Slavic, Russian, and Serbian textbooks from the 17th and 18th centuries, catechisms in the Eastern Slavic area in the 17th–18th centuries, and translation activities in Russia during the time of Peter the Great. In addition, there is an ongoing research project funded by PRIN (2022–2025; research unit): Russian Literature through the Works: Critical Readings and In-depth Analyses. Other research areas include Russian language and linguistics, particularly conceptual metaphors and metonymies in the Russian language and in Russian media and political discourse (including multimodal), as well as the metaphorical conceptualization of emotions.