Author: Giona Tuccini
Born: 23 October 1974
Bio: GIONA TUCCINI was born in Fucecchio in the district of Florence (Italy) on 23 October 1974. As well as having lived in Tuscany, his native region, he has resided in Cambridge (UK), California, Berlin and Rome. He achieved summa cum laude his Master’s Degree in Italian Studies at the University of Florence (studying Italian philology under Rosanna Bettarini and Italian literature under Marco Marchi), where he then pursued a doctorate in Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean with a thesis in Italian Literature at the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures. He obtained a postgraduate diploma in “The Trecento Tradition in Italian Literature” at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, in Literary translation from English and Spanish at the University of Florence, and took the DITALS (Diploma of Teaching Italian as a Foreign Language) training course at the University for Foreigners of Siena. Having already worked as a literature teacher in the state schools (Middle school and Liceo classico), he has been Lecturer of Italian literature and Research Fellow at several universities, both in Italy and abroad, such as the University of Rome Tor Vergata, the Tuscia University, the Third University of Rome, the University for Foreigners of Siena, the Fundação Oriente in Goa (India), and the University of Banja Luka (Bosnia). He is a member of the Governing Board of the Library Foundation “Luciana Stegagno Picchio” at the Portuguese Institute of S. Antonio in Rome, and editor of the peer-reviewed journal "Studi d’Italianistica nell’Africa Australe / Italian Studies in Southern Africa". He joined UCT in August 2010 where he serves as Associate Professor of Italian Literature. Furthermore, as part of the agreement between UCT and the University of Pisa, he is the coordinator of the training programme for students undertaking the Masters in Translation of Post-Colonial texts in Pisa. His research topics are in the field of mysticism and religious writings (both poetry and prose), of medieval and early-modern Italian literature, of the Twentieth-century Italian prose, cinema and drama. His research interests include:
   1. The study of patristics, medieval and golden-age mysticism in modern Italian culture, especially with respect to the relationship between the 16th century Spanish Carmelite and post-pragmatist Italian poetry and critical theory
   2. Italian religious literature from Middle Ages to Renaissance
   3. The work of Pier Paolo Pasolini
In addition to these three principal areas of research, Giona Tuccini’s other studies have been dedicated to Humanistic and early-modern authors (Petrarch, Sennuccio del Bene, Giovanni da Empoli, and Alessandro Tassoni), as well as writers and trends in Twentieth-Century literature (to his studies on Pier Paolo Pasolini, Giovanni Boine, and Giovanni Papini he added others on Luigi Illica’s libretti for Opera, on the novelists and playwrights Enrico Pea, Luigi Pirandello, and Dario Fo).
In recent years he has also translated Vicente Aleixandre, Dámaso Alonso, Andrés Sánchez Robayna, Alberto Olmos, Sylvia Plath, José Custódio de Faria and Joe R. Ackerley from English, French, and Spanish into Italian. His articles have appeared in refereed journals both Italian and foreign, among which are «Studi e problemi di critica testuale», «Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie», «Critica letteraria», and «The Romanic Review». His books have been reviewed in the cultural section of major Italian newspapers.