Roberto Ferrini, Ph.D. Student

I am a PhD candidate in Italian Studies at Yale University. I graduated from the University of Pisa and the Scuola Normale Superiore in 2018 with a thesis on early modern Italian chivalric literature. After publishing some essays on early modern Italian authors such as Ludovico Ariosto, Moderata Fonte and Lucrezia Marinella, I am currently working on a PhD dissertation on the representation of the relationship between human beings and nature in Sicilian narratives of the Risorgimento and post-Risorgimento years, with a special focus on the works of Giovanni Verga, Luigi Pirandello and Tomasi di Lampedusa.

As my dissertation project suggests, I am particularly interested in the ecocritical analysis of the representation of the natural world in narrative texts. My other research interests include early-modern women’s writing and the literary and philosophical production of Giacomo Leopardi.