I graduated from the University of Pavia in History of Literature (1988), under the supervision of Professor Franco Gavazzeni, with a thesis about the sixteenth-century poet Angelo Grillo. In the summer of 1981 I got a scholarship to join a seminar organized by the Fondazione Cini in Venice. From 1991 to 1993 I received a fellowship financed by the Ministry of Education, which allowed me to study under the supervision of Professor Guglielmo Gorni at the University of Geneva, where I took part in the symposia organized by the Département de langues et de littératures romanes, where I gave two papers: Nuove fonti cavalleresche delle Macaronee folenghiane (New Chivalric Sources of Folengo’s Macaronee) (1992); Le dotte carte e le divine grazie: l’Ariosto del Folengo (The Learned Leaves and the Divine Graces: Folengo’s Ariosto). In 1993-1994 I was awarded a PhD in Literary Sciences from the University of Pavia, concluded with a dissertation on Gabriello Chiabrera, Scherzi, maniere e canzonette morali (critical edition and comment). From 1999 to 2001 I was research fellow at Pavia University with a post-doctoral grant in Historical Sciences. From 1999 to 2006 I worked at the National Centre for the Studies on Alessandro Manzoni, where I joined a research group led by Professor Dante Isella, working on the critical edition of Manzoni’s I promessi sposi.
From the academic year 2001/2002 to 2006 I was teaching fellow at the University of Pavia; in 2007/2008 I became fixed-term lecturer of Linguistic and Italian Philology at the university of Parma, where I was subsequently appointed lecturer in the disciplinary sector FIL-LET/13 (2008) and associate professor (2015). In November 2017 I received the National Scientific Qualification (Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale) as full professor in Italian Philology.
Since 2008 I have been a member of the scientific board of the PhD in Philological-literary-historical-philosophical and artistic Sciences at the University of Parma. During the last ten years I supervised the work of five PhD students. Since January 2017 I have been Director of Undergraduate Studies of Literature at the University of Parma.
I am corresponding member of the Commissione per i testi di lingua of Bologna, member of the scientific Committee of the Vittorio Sereni Archive and of the Centro studi Lalla Romano Foundation.
With Simone Albonico I edited the series of 30 volumes of poetry published in 2004 by RCS as a supplement of the newspaper «Il Corriere della sera», and I directed the collection «Il banco dei rari» for the Sylvestre Bonnard Editions. I am currently co-director of the collection BITeS (Edition of Storia e Letteratura, Roma), and of the series «Authorial Philology» for Carocci Editore. I am also a member of the Scientific Commitee of «I testi per la storia della cultura svizzera italiana», a programme of the Divisione della cultura e degli studi universitari funded by Canton Ticino
Since 2015 I have been co-director of the high level scientific review «Filologia italiana», Fabrizio Serra Editore, Pisa (ISSN 1724-6113), and member of the scientific board of «Annali manzoniani» and of «Prassi ecdotiche per la modernità letteraria.
In 2005-2007 I was responsible for the scientific direction of the project «ArchiLett900», «Archivi letterari lombardi del Novecento», (), funded by Regione Lombardia and Cariplo, and I am currently Principal Investigator of the National Research Project PRIN 2015FN4ZSN Manzoni Online: carte, libri, edizioni, strumenti.
I gave papers at the following national and international conferences:
Il Boiardo e il mondo estense nel Quattrocento (Scandiano-Modena-Ferrara, 13-17 September 1994); Giornate barocche (Università di Genova, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, 20 April 1999); Euridice 1600-2000 (Paris, Institut Culturel Italien, 26-29 October 2000); Pietosi affetti. Il madrigale spirituale nell’Italia del Cinque-Seicento (Venezia, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, 30-31 October 2000); Petrarca in barocco (Roma, Università La Sapienza, 23-26 October 2002); A brani una futile passione. Per Vittorio Sereni (Brescia, Liceo Ginnasio Arnaldo, 10-11 February 2003); Le parole le cose. Percorsi e linguaggi di Emilio Tadini (Milano, Palazzo Reale, 24-25 September 2004); Scrittori e vocabolari nella tradizione italiana (Università di Parma, May 2007); Dante Isella e la filologia d’autore (Università di Pavia, 30 October 2008); Leopardi e il ‘500 (Siena, 26-28 November 2009); (Ri)leggere i Promessi sposi (Parma, Liceo Romagnosi, 18 April 2010); Lettura dei Canti di Giacomo Leopardi (Université de Fribourg, 26 October 2011); La filologia d’autor en el estudios literaris (Universitat de Lleida, 4-5 October 2012); Vittorio Sereni. Un altro compleanno, (Milano-Segrate-Luino 24-26 October 2013); L’Autore e il suo archivio (Université de Lausanne, 28-29 November 2013); Letteratura, opera lirica, cinema. Manzoni, Verdi, Shakespeare (Università degli Studi di Pavia 24-25 March 2014); Fonti che aprono su panorami imprevisti (Università degli Studi di Parma, May 2015); La traduzione foscoliana della Coma Berenices di Catullo. Per una nuova edizione commentata (Università degli Studi di Parma, 27 March 2015); Prassi ecdotiche. Quale edizione per quale lettore? (Università degli Studi di Milano, 21 October 2015); Giorgio Bassani 1916-2016 (Ferrara-Roma, 14-19 November 2016); Dove va la filologia d'autore? (Firenze, Convegno SFLI, 20 December 2016); La tradizione dei testi (Cortona, Convegno SFLI, 21-23 September 2017); Nuovi testimoni e marginalia manzoniani (Bologna, 22 February 2018).
I took part in the realization of the exhibitions Immaginare e costruire la nazione: Manzoni da Napoleone a Garibaldi, and La riflessione sulla giustizia a Milano: un laboratorio europeo, set up at the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense of Milano in march 2012 and in october 2014; I also gave lectures in the parallel series organized by the Lombard Historical Society.
Moreover, I gave lectures at the Universities of Bologna, Cassino, Cremona, Firenze, Fribourg, Geneve, Lausanne, State University of Milan, Catholic University of Milan, Paris Sorbonne, Pavia, Rome La Sapienza, Siena, Trent, Verona, and in several secondary schools and public libraries.
Since 2016 I have been organizing, with Giorgio Panizza and Cecilia Ghibaudi, the lecture series Scene di conversazione, devoted to the link between art and literature, held at the Pinacoteca di Brera.
I organized the following conferences and workshops at the University of Parma:
(with Paolo Bongrani and Paolo Briganti) Sul declinare dell’anno… Una giornata per Attilio Bertolucci a cent’anni dalla nascita, 6 December 2011; Leggere gli apparati (testi e testimoni dei classici italiani), 14 April 2012; (with Ugo Fantasia) La fortuna e lo studio critico dell’opera dantesca in Italia dalla Rivoluzione alla Restaurazione (23 May 2012); (with Ugo Fantasia) Plutarco e Tucidide nel Quattrocento italiano, 9 October 2013; (with Carlo Varotti and Paolo Rinoldi), Boccaccio in versi, 13-14 March 2014; Per Vittorio Sereni, 28 May 2014; (with Marco Gentile) Gaspare Ambrogio e i Visconti, 11 November 2014
My research interests focus mainly on sixteenth-seventeenth and twentieth century poetry, and on the work of Alessandro Manzoni. I worked with Paola Italia and Barbara Colli on the critical edition of Fermo e Lucia and on the edition, never before realized, of the second draft, Gli Sposi promessi (of which I also wrote the general introduction).The two editions, published by the Casa del Manzoni in the context of the National Edition of the works of Manzoni, received many reviews on newspapers and scientific journals, and they are the reference works in current Manzoni’s critical bibliography. For the edition of Fermo e Lucia I was awarded the prize Calabria in 2007; Gli Sposi promessi was presented several times at the Universities of Pavia, Parma, Lausanne, Florence, Rome, and most notably at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana of Milan (by Angelo Stella and Cesare Segre) and at the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome (by Angelo Stella and Alfredo Stussi). In the last reprint of the Introduzione alla Filologia italiana by Alfredo Stussi, the two editions are used as examples of critical apparatus in genetic editions. My volume Come lavorava Manzoni aims to summarize my conclusions on Manzoni’s working methods, which I scrutinized when working on the critical editions. My critical and commentated editions of works by Vittorio Sereni (La tentazione della prosa, a collection of the author’s prose writing; Un tacito mistero, a critical and commentated edition of the correspondence with Alessandro Parronchi; and Poesie e prose) are also considered a reference in the current studies on the author. My handbook Che cos’è la filologia d’autore, written with Paola Italia, is used in several academic courses, has been reprinted three times since 2010 and has been translated into Spanish.
Since 2008 I have produced 43 publications, including two monographs (one of which written with Paola Italia), two critical editions, and five articles published in high level scientific reviews.
