Current Fellows Romance Studies
Meet our current fellows!
Prof. Eugenia Fosalba
University of Girona
Prof. Eugenia Fosalba is a Rolf-Lessenich-Fellow from 1-31 October 2024. She is collaborating in Bonn with Prof. Karin Peters (Romance Studies) in the context of a new research project on transnational literary histories of Siglo de Oro literature. It will give her the opportunity to present her Pronapoli network, which is funded by the Spanish Government and explores the Neapolitan years of Renaissance poet Garcilaso de la Vega, as well as contribute to a workshop for doctoral candidates on transnational methods in Spanish Studies.
Eugenia Fosalba is Professor for Spanish Golden Age literature in Girona and a renowned specialist not only of Garcilaso de la Vega, but Jorge de Montemayor and Lope de Vega as well. She is the editor of a high-level philological research journal, pioneer in Spain in digital format with double peer review (OJS), which she has been editing since its creation in 2007: Studia Aurea: Revista de Literatura Española y Teoría Literaria del Renacimiento y Siglo de Oro, and the series of research volumes attached to the journal: Studia Aurea Monográfica.
Her research career began with the demonstration of Montemayor’s authorship of the famous Moorish tale of the Abencerraje interpolated in his pastoral novel Los siete libros de la Diana (1558-1559). As a result of her unique expertise, Eugenia Fosalba published an innovative study and edition of El Abencerraje in 2017 for the prestigious Biblioteca Clásica collection at the Real Academia Española.
Early modern pastoral literature plays a central role in her works to this day. In particular, she studied the impact of Montemayor’s novel in Spain, France, England, and Germany (La Diana en Europa: ediciones, traducciones e influencias, Barcelona: Ed. Universidad Autónoma, 1994) and commented on the influence of the Spanish sentimental novel on La Princesse de Clèves (in Bulletin Hispanique 108:2, 2006), among others. But she also explored various aspects of Lope de Vega's dramatic work and published articles on Montemayor, Cervantes, Aldana, Encina, Torres Naharro as well as several studies on the poetics of the Horatian eclogue and epistle, using a comparative approach.
Over the last 15 years, her research has concentrated on Garcilaso de la Vega and his Neapolitan circle, with four collective volumes, a book on Garcilaso in Naples (Pulchra Parthenope. Hacia la facta napolitana de la poesía de Garcilaso, Madrid/Frankfurt a. M.: Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2019), an edited monograph on the poetry of Juan Boscán (2013), 23 articles and chapters that have had a great impact on Hispanist criticism and international doctoral theses. The Pronapoli research project successfully extended the study of the poet’s better-known works to the transversal aspect of his Neapolitan poetry, namely his Horatian neoclassicism, analysing the reception of Horatian work in Naples and the influence on Garcilaso’s work (Eugenia Fosalba / Gáldrick de la Torre [eds.], Contexto latino y vulgar de Garcilaso en Nápoles: redes de relaciones de humanistas y poetas [manuscritos, cartas, academias], Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2018.). In addition, Eugenia Fosalba directed an annotated critical edition of texts which participate in that Horatianism through which Garcilaso gained so much recognition during the final phase of his time in Naples: Eclogue II, Epistle to Boscan, Elegy II, the Ode ad Florem Gnidi and the three already known neo-Latin odes, plus the two odes newly discovered by Maria Czepiel (Oxford), a member of Pronapoli, which urgently needed a critical edition and are now online. Recently, the prestigious Spanish publishing house Cátedra commissioned her to write a new biography of the poet, which she will compile based on numerous documents she found in Spanish and Italian archives (such as an unpublished autograph text by Garcilaso, edited with Adalid Nievas in BRAE, 2022). In contrast to chronicles and other letters, they offer a more vivid and accurate picture of Garcilaso’s role as a messenger, diplomat, spy, and military strategist in the highest circles of European power. Parallelly, Eugenia Fosalba started preparing an international research project on ‘travelling poets’ at the early modern courts of Europe that will build on her scholarly networks and further explore the connectivity of European culture, literature, and politics in the Early modern period.
Past Fellows Romance Studies
Prof. Dr. Simone Magherini
University of Florence
Simone Magherini (1964) was a Rolf-Lessenich-Fellow in april 2024. He is full professor of Italian Literature at the Department of Literature and Philosophy and director of the ‘Aldo Palazzeschi’ Study Centre at the University of Florence.
His main research focus is on the multiple forms of literary communication between the 16th and 18th centuries, bringing to light unpublished or little-known cultural aspects from the time frame between the Galilean school and the Risorgimento.
One of his research sectors is the relationship between literature and the New Science, particularly the scientific prose of Francesco Redi, with studies on the empirical applications of Galileo’s scientific method in the medical field, and on the cognitive value of Dante quotations in use.
Another research sector is the literary work of Niccolò Tommaseo, particularly regarding the political and moral contribution of Dante to Tommaseo’s treatise on Italy (1835), and how his Poesie were received by the protagonists writing in the new forms of post-unitary lyric poetry. A first edition of the unpublished part of Tommaseo’s significant correspondence with Gino Capponi (1859-1874) has been produced, and in connection with the 19th-century Italian novel, Magherini contributes investigation into the moral and ideological implications of Antonio Fogazzaro’s narrative works.
Magherini has studied 19th-/20th-century literary culture and the protagonists of the historical avant-garde through archive research, publishing correspondence, examining sources, as well as speaking on the significance of Dante and Leopardi’s influence on 20th-century poetry.
On the front of computer applications for teaching Italian literature and for humanities research, he has designed and set up Writers’ Papers Online (www.cartedautore.it), a portal which allows users to consult digital archives of modern Italian literature online, designed according to the typical requirements for institutional open archives, consistent with criteria of portability, scalability and interoperability.