The work delves into the debated question of contemporary
Italian Renaissance art in the corpus of Shakespeare’s plays, and brings new
light to the Bard’s preference, among so many talented artists , for Julio
Romano, the “rare Italian master”, who embellished Mantua, the city visited by
English noblemen, at the time, and one of the playwright’s favorite
settings in his “Italian” plays. The book includes a new
study on Mantua and William Shakespeare, a totally new perspective, which
discovers the city of the Gonzaga lords as a veritable and fitting outdoor
stage for Shakespeare.
Is professor of English Language and Culture and has published books and essays in Italian and English. Her output ranges from the late Victorian period (Oscar Wilde, Ronald Firbank, Vernon Lee, Maurice Hewlett) to Shakespeare, to Anglo/Italian Relations in the Renaissance, and to English-speaking travelers to Italy. She’s an active member of the Centro Interuniversitario di Ricerche sul Viaggio in Italia (CIRVI), of the Società Italiana di Comparatistica Letteraria (SICL) and of the Shakespeare Association of India. Her most recent publications are: Shakespeare’s Mantua/La Mantova di Shakespeare (Mantova 2016), the first Italian edition of William Dean Howells, Italian Journeys/Viaggi in Italia Moncalieri (Torino), CIRVI 2017, and a forthcoming research essay on the Protestant writer and publisher, Giacomo Castelvetro (1546-1616), a veritable European figure ante litteram.