Dr Paolo De Ventura PhD

• PhD, Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University, 2003
• MA, Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University, 1998
• Laurea, Lettere e Filosofia, indirizzo Italianistica, Storia della Lingua Italiana, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, 1993.
• Diploma, Biblioteconomia, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, 1992

My formation began in Italy (degree in History of the Italian Language from the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, under the guidance of Luca Serianni; diploma in Library Sciences from the Vatican Library), and continued in the USA (graduate courses on Linguistics and Literary Theory at Duquesne and Cornell University). I spent nine years at Harvard University, studying, researching and teaching (excellence in teaching award, 1998-1999-2000), and attaining my M.A. and Ph.D, under the guidance of Prof. Fido and Prof. Pertile, my maestro in the field of Dante studies. I have been working in the Department of Italian Studies at Birmingham since 2004.

I teach mostly across the areas of history of the Italian language, sociolinguistics, Dante and the premodern period in general for Italian Studies, European Studies and the Joint Birmingham-Warwick MA. At present, I am supervising the linguistic research of three PhD students.

Paolo De Ventura's main area of research has revolved around Dante’s Comedy and its Medieval, French, Occitan and Latin context, using a linguistic and philological approach as a privileged standpoint for literary criticism. He is particularly interested in the peculiarity of Medieval language, with its dramatic and performative elements embedded within the written page.

At present, Dr De Ventura is supervising the research of three PhD students in the areas of linguistics and Medieval Studies.

Find out more - our PhD Italian Studies  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

My main area of research has revolved around Dante’s Comedy and its Medieval, French, Occitan and Latin context, using a linguistic and philological approach as a privileged standpoint for literary criticism. I am particularly interested in the peculiarity of Medieval language, with its dramatic and performative elements embedded within the written page.  In my first book, I focused on the close relationship between Dante’s text and the notion of drama and orality typical of the time, using a textual analysis based on diachronic and pragmatic linguistics.  Within this perspective, rather than the initiator of the Italian literature, Dante appears as the arrival point of a number of varied and complex traditions. In this context, performance, music and dramatic representations were intrinsic to vernacular “literature”, which was still developing and not yet classifiable as “national”. I am currently working on the significance of the Old French and Provençal tradition as subtexts for the early Italian literary works, with special attention to the character of Merlin.  Another strand of my current research focuses on the Dantean motifs in the Rossetti family, and on the language of 19th-century Italian writers (in particular, I provided a critical text for the Standard National Edition of the complete works of Luigi Capuana).

Aside from linguistics and literature, I have great interest in Medieval and Renaissance music. I would like supervising postgraduate research aiming to focus on the interrelation of language-literature-music in premodern Italy.  I am also interested in the Pre-Raphaelites and the Dantesque influences in the Rossetti circle.

I am a Committee Member of the European Rossetti Centre (Centro Europeo di Studi Rossettiani, Vasto, Italy), and of the  Hilton Shepherd Postgraduate Centre for Medieval Studies (University of Birmingham – Department of English). I am a member of the International Scientific Committee of the academic journal Critica Letteraria, a referee for the Dante Prize, and President of the Dante Alighieri Society of Birmingham.