Dr Selene Scarsi

About

My main area of interest is Anglo-Italian relations in the Renaissance. I read English at the University of Hull, where I was awarded the English Prize, and obtained my doctorate at the same University with a thesis on the extant Elizabethan translations of three Italian Renaissance epic poems, supervised by Dr Jason Lawrence.

My first monograph, entitled 'Translating Women in Early Modern England: Gender in the Elizabethan Versions of Boiardo, Ariosto and Tasso', was published by Ashgate in 2010 as part of their 'Anglo-Italian Renaissance Studies' series. I am now working on a comparative study of English and Italian female sonneteers in the Renaissance.

I am currently supervising two PhDs: one on the reception of Ludovico Ariosto's 'Orlando Furioso', and one on food in Medieval and Renaissance literature. I welcome PhD applications from students wishing to work on the literary and cultural relationship between Italy and England in the Early Modern period, as well as on Renaissance women's writing.

Academic responsibilities

Senior Lecturer in English

Qualifications

  • PhD English Renaissance Literature, University of Hull
  • BA (Hons) English Literature, University of Hull

Teaching and learning

Undergraduate courses taught

Postgraduate courses taught

Research

I first fell in love with my primary area of interest, the literary and cultural relationship between Italy and England in the Renaissance, as an undergraduate student at the University of Hull, where I concluded my BA with a dissertation on the influence of Niccolò Machiavelli and Pietro Aretino as playwrights on Ben Jonson. My PhD thesis explored the extant Elizabethan translations of three Italian Renaissance epic poems, and was subsequently turned into a book, 'Translating Women in Early Modern England: Gender in the Elizabethan Versions of Boiardo, Ariosto and Tasso', which was published by Ashgate in 2010. I have also written on Tofte, Harington and Spenser, and am now working on a comparative study of English and Italian female sonneteers in the Renaissance.

Research student supervision

Main supervision

Other supervision

Publications

Number of items: 3.

Article

Scarsi, Selene (2021) A recently-discovered addition to the poems in praise of Violante Visconti : an unpublished, and hitherto unknown, autograph canzone in Bernardo Tasso’s hand. Studi Tassiani, LXIX, pp. 183-188. ISSN (print) 1123-4490

Book Section

Scarsi, Selene (2022) 'And of what force your wounding graces are’. : Importing the wound from Italy to Elizabethan England. In: Bondi, Fabrizio , Stella, Massimo and Torre, Andrea, (eds.) The wounded body : memory, language and the self from Petrarch to Shakespeare. Basingstoke, U.K. : Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 315-332. ISBN 9783030919030

Scarsi, Selene (2019) "Did Ariosto write it?" : the Orlando Furioso in Elizabethan poetry. In: Marrapodi, Michele, (ed.) The Routledge research companion to Anglo-Italian renaissance literature and culture. Abingdon, UK : Routledge. pp. 160-176. ISBN 9781472410733

This list was generated on Wed Sep 13 07:23:14 2023 BST.