How can a life become a form of criticism?
My research on Roland Barthes spans more than a decade and includes two monographs, several articles and encyclopedia entries for the Dictionnaire Roland Barthes (Honoré Champion, 2024). It investigates the relationships between biography, literary theory and authorship, with particular attention to Barthes’ interviews, his reception in Italy and the evolution of his late writing.
Alongside this work, I compiled the most comprehensive census to date of Barthes’ print, radio and television interviews, substantially expanding the available archival record. [PDF below; an English version of this list has been published here.]
Selected publications
Roland Barthes. Dalla vita al testo (2024)
Roland Barthes contesté: Franco Fortini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Umberto Eco (2016)
See complete bibliography → Publications
How did aviation reshape the cultural imagination of modernity?
This ongoing project examines how the invention of flight transformed literary and visual representations of space, technology and historical experience throughout the twentieth century. Bringing together literary criticism, cultural history and media studies, it explores the impact of aviation on literature, painting, photography, cinema and other artistic forms.
Rather than treating flight as a technological achievement alone, the project investigates it as a cultural paradigm that redefined perception, movement and the modern imagination.
Related publication
Il sopra delle nubi è un altro mondo». L’immaginario aviatorio tra le due guerre (2021)
Why did writers begin imagining interviews that never took place?
This research investigates the emergence of the imagined interview as a literary genre. Originating from modern journalism, the interview gradually became an object of literary invention, allowing writers to fictionalize dialogue, authorship and self-representation across print, radio, television and digital media.
Selected publications
L’intervista immaginata (2022)
The Imagined Interview: A Literary Genre (2024)
L'interview imaginée : un genre littéraire (2024)
See complete bibliography → Publications
Can literary criticism become literature?
This project explores the hybrid forms that emerge when literary criticism adopts narrative and autobiographical strategies. Focusing on Europe and the United States, it reconstructs the history of the pseudo-essay as a genre situated between criticism, fiction and media culture.
Selected Publications
Pseudo-saggi. (Ri)Scritture tra critica e letteratura (2019)
Pseudo-essais : l’hybridation des genres non fictionnels entre autobiographie et métatextualité aux États-Unis (2024)
,“Vidéo-essais : la vidéo-critique cinématographique et littéraire comme outil pédagogique (2022)
See complete bibliography → Publications
What happens when lyric poetry speaks the language of institutions?
This research examines the relationships between poetry and legal discourse, investigating how contemporary poets reshape institutional language through lyric forms.
Related Publication
Beyond Forensic Poetry: Lyric and Legal Languages in Contemporary Poems (2018)