Biography

Jean-Luc Nardone graduated in Italian studies from Paris IV-Sorbonne and is now Full Professor at the University of Toulouse II, France, with the chair of Italian Literature. After being head of the department, he is Director of Il Laboratorio, the research group of Italian studies with a strong research focus on Petrarch and poetry. He’s currently working on two large research projects: Petrarca and Petrarchism in Europe (XIV-XVIIth cent.) and the relationship between Europe and Orient through the texts of pilgrims, soldiers, merchants and artists during the Renaissance period.

Project Summary

While there were only around thirty editions of Corneille's plays translated into Italian and published in the 17th century, there were more than a hundred editions in the 18th century. Generally speaking, it would seem that the major projects on Corneille and Italy date back essentially to the 3rd centenary of his death, in 1984, while very few studies have taken the opportunity of the 4th centenary of his birth, in 2006, as if the subject had been exhausted. This research will demonstrate that this is not the case through two main objectives: the first and most immediate objective is to gather as much information as possible on the Italian-language manuscripts of Corneille's plays, which are sometimes quite difficult to locate. One of the goals is to make a first critical edition of one of these texts, which is not available in online directories. The second objective is to gather a body of data in order to answer questions that have so far been largely ignored about Corneille's immediate fortune in Italy, the translators, the tragedies, and the support networks for these translations such as theatres, academies, and Jesuit institutions.