Valeria Finucci
Department of History
Duke University
Valeria Finucci, Professor Emerita of Romance Studies at Duke University, received a “Laurea” summa cum laude from the University of Rome and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois. She works on the early modern period and writes on prose fiction; epic and chivalric romances; drama; medical and material culture; costume books, and literary theory. Her publications include three books: The Prince’s Body: Vincenzo Gonzaga and Renaissance Medicine (Harvard, 2015); The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity, and Castration in the Italian Renaissance (Duke, 2003); and The Lady Vanishes: Subjectivity and Representation in Castiglione and Ariosto (Stanford, 1992); four collections of essays edited or co-edited: Petrarca: Canoni, esemplarità (Bulzoni, 2006); Generation and Degeneration: Tropes of Reproduction in Literature and History (Duke, 2001); Renaissance Transactions: Ariosto and Tasso (Duke, 1999); and Desire in the Renaissance: Psychoanalysis and Literature (Princeton, 1994); as well as three critical editions of 16th and early 17th century works by women writers: Valeria Miani’s tragedy, Celinda (bilingual edition, Toronto, 2010); Moderata Fonte’s romance of chivalry, Tredici canti del Floridoro (Mucchi, 1995), now also in English as Floridoro, a Chivalric Romance (Chicago, 2006); and Giulia Bigolina’s novel, Urania (Bulzoni, 2002), now also in English, as Urania, a Romance (Chicago, 2005).
As co-editor of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, she has edited three special issues, Thinking through Death: The Politics of the Corpse (Winter 2015, forthcoming); Mapping the Mediterranean (Winter 2007); and On the Footsteps of Petrarch (Fall 2005). Recently, she has co-edited a volume on one of the earliest costume books still in manuscript, Mores Italiae: Costume and Life in the Renaissance // Costumi e scene di vita del Rinascimento (bilingual edition, Biblos, 2007) and is working on a critical bilingual edition of Isabella Andreini’s pastoral La Mirtilla.