“At the dawn of the 19th century, Italy had, for 200 years, been the universal art gallery, wunderkammer, museum, classroom, repository of Europe’s heritage,” writes Roderick Cavaliero in his recently published book Italia Romantica, a lively and vivid historical account of the Romantics’ love affair with Italy. Indeed English writers, artists and scholars have drawn so extensively on the culture of Italy in the field of literature, art, architecture, painting and music that it has become difficult to assess and evaluate the nature of this extraordinary influence.

A number of eminent British and Italian scholars will assemble at the University of Malta to read papers on the influence of Italy in English literature and culture. The Fifth International Conference on Anglo-Italian Literary and Cultural Relations is being convened by Professor Peter Vassallo, Head of the Department of English and Director of the Institute of Anglo-Italian studies at the university. The conference will be held in the University House Conference Room on Thursday 15 and Friday 16 September from 9am to 4.30pm.

Scholars will focus mainly, but not exclusively, on a variety of topics relating to the central theme of Anglo-Italian cross-cultural influences. The following are some of the proposed papers:

Prof. John Woodhouse (Oxford), From Leon Battista Alberti to Jane Austen by way of Giacomo Leoni and television drama;

Prof. Carla Dente (Pisa), Shakespeare and Goldoni;

Dr Gloria Lauri Lucente (Malta), Wyatt’s Petrarchism and the anxiety of influence;

Prof. Manfred Pfister (Berlin), English Romantic Visions of Italy;

Prof. Tim Webb (Bristol), English Figurings of the Italian language in the Romantic Period;

Dr Maria Schoina(Thessaloniki), Mary Shelley’Anglo-Italicus’;

Prof. Nick Roe (St Andrews), Leigh Hunt in Italy;

Dr Sally Collins (London),The Amorous disease of Falling in Love with Italy;

Dr Francis O’Gorman (Leeds), Ruskin, Venice and Ghosts;

Prof. Alison Yarrington (Glasgow), Women sculptors in Italy in the mid-19th century;

Dr Sharon Oubitt (Nottingham), British Travellers in Southern Italy;

Prof. Valeria Tinkler Villani (Leiden), Presence and Absence in Byron’s ‘The prophecy of Dante’

Prof. Michael O’Neill (Durham), Yeats, Shelley and Dante;

Prof. Peter Vassallo (Malta), D.H. Lawrence and the Sicilian myth of Persephone;

Dr Michael Cronin (Calabria), D.H. Lawrence and Verga;

Dr Bernardette Falzon Santucci (Messina), E.M. Forster in search of the Italian sun;

Prof. Michael Stannard (Leicester), Muriel Spark in Tuscany;

Dr Mark Roberts (The British Institute, Florence), Evelyn Waugh’s visits to Italy;

Prof. Maurizio Ascari (Bologna), British Travellers to the Republic of San Marino;

Alan Christensen (John Cabot, Rome), The Romance of Anglo-Italian Studies: the brief fictions of Francesco Marroni.

There is a registration conference fee of Lm10 (studentsLm5). For further information about this conference please contact the secretary Stephania Buttigieg on 2340 2963) or e-mail stephania.buttigieg@ um.edu.mt

The conference website can be visited at http://home.um.edu.mt/angloitalconf5.html