Valeria Finucci, Professor; Italian

Valeria Finucci

Office Location:  219E Languages Building
Office Phone:  +1 919-660-3119, +1 919-660-3100
Email Address:   send me a message

Valeria Finucci received a "Laurea" summa cum laude from the University of Rome and a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her main interests are Renaissance literature and culture, theater, women's work, early modern medicine and pharmacy, psychoanalysis, and genre studies. And she loves everything connected to Venice. She has written on femininity and power in Renaissance discourses in The Lady Vanishes: Subjectivity and Representation in Castiglione and Ariosto (Stanford, 1992) and on issues of masculinity and paternity in The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity, and Castration in the Italian Renaissance (Duke, 2003). She is the editor of Renaissance Transactions: Ariosto and Tasso (Duke, 1999); and co-editor of Desire in the Renaissance: Psychoanalysis and Literature (Princeton, 1994) and of Generation and Degeneration: Tropes of Reproduction in Literature and History (Duke, 2001). Building on her interest in genre and gender study, she has edited a 16th century female verse epic, Moderata Fonte's Tredici canti del Floridoro (Mucchi, 1995); now in English too as Floridoro, a Chivalric Romance (U. of Chicago P., 2006); has brought out the manuscript of the only female prose romance of the Italian Renaissance, Giulia Bigolina's Urania (Bulzoni, 2002), which she then translated in English as Urania, a Romance (U of Chicago P, 2005); and is presently working on the genre of early modern female tragedy. She is co-editor of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies and has also edited two special issues of the journal: In the Footsteps of Petrarch (Fall 2005) and Mapping the Mediterranean (Winter 2007). Petrarch is the subject of her new collection, Petrarca: Canoni, Esemplarità (Bulzoni, 2006).

Education:

  • PhD in Comparative Literature, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1983
  • MA in Comparative Literature, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1977
  • Advanced Certificate, Mount Hoyoke College, 1976
  • Laurea in Modern Languages and Literature, summa cum laude,, University of Rome, 1974

Research Interests:

Renaissance epic, romance, treatise and theater; women writers, medical and literary understandings of the body, Venetian culture, Renaissance fashion, medicine in early modern Italy, New World's pharmacy, and psychoanalysis.

Areas of Interest:

renaissance literature
the epic
the romance
women's studies
cultural studies
psychoanalisis

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

  1. V. Finucci, ed, Celinda, A Tragedy by Valeria Miani (forthcoming, 2010), Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies (bilingual edition--English and Italian.) .
  2. V. Finucci and M. Rippa Bonati, eds, Mores Italiae: Costume and Life in the Renaissance // Costumi e scene di vita del Rinascimento (Yale University, Beinecke Library, MS 457) (2007), pp. 232pp, Bilingual Edition. Padua: Biblos .
  3. V. Finucci, ed, Mapping the Mediterranean, A Special Issue of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, vol. 37 no. 1 (Winter 2007) .
  4. V. Finucci, ed, Floridoro, a Chivalric Romance by Moderata Fonte (2006), pp. 493pp, University of Chicago Press .
  5. V. Finucci, ed, Petrarca, canoni, esemplarità (2006), pp. 361pp, Rome: Bulzoni Editore .
  6. V. Finucci, ed and trans, Urania by Giulia Bigolina (2005), pp. 192pp, University of Chicago Press .
  7. V. Finucci, ed, In the Footsteps of Petrarch: Literature, Art, Music, Culture, A Special Issue of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, vol. 35 no. 3 (Fall 2005) .
  8. V. Finucci, The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity, and Castration in the Italian Renaissance (2003), Duke University Press, 321 pp .
  9. V. Finucci, ed, Urania di Giulia Bigolina (ca. 1554) (2002: 198 pp), Rome: Bulzoni Editore .
  10. V. Finucci and K. Brownlee, eds, Generation and Degeneration: Tropes of Reproduction in Literature and History from Antiquity to Early Modern Europe (2001: 327 pp), Duke University Press .
  11. V. Finucci, ed, Renaissance Transactions: Ariosto and Tasso (1999: 328 pp), Duke University Press .
  12. V. Finucci, ed, Tredici canti del Floridoro di Moderata Fonte (1581) (1995), pp. 232 pp, Modena: Mucchi .
  13. V. Finucci and R. Schwartz, eds, Desire in the Renaissance: Psychoanalysis and Literature (1994: 277 pp), Princeton University Press .
  14. V. Finucci, The Lady Vanishes: Subjectivity and Representation in Castiglione and Ariosto (1992), Stanford University Press, 329 pp .