Giuseppe Scaraffia
Giuseppe Scaraffia is an Italian writer and professor. Biography. Giuseppe Scaraffia was born in Turin, Italy, in 1950. He graduated in Philosophy at the University of Milan with a thesis on the idea of happiness in Diderot. He has taught French Literature at the Sapienza University of Rome since 1976. Over the years his research has focused in particular on the great myths of seduction of the 19th century, from the figure of the femme fatale to that of the tall dark stranger. In 2000 he was nominated Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, an institution  which is directly managed by the French Ministry of Culture. In 2008 he was awarded the "Grinzane – Beppe Fenoglio" special prize for the book "Cortigiane" (2008). With his partner Silvia Ronchey he wrote and hosted cultural programmes for RAI television collaborating with the national channels RAI SAT, RAI 1, RAI 2 and RAI 3. Among these, "L'altra edicola" (a cultural programme broadcast by RAI 2 in the 1990s). Always with Silvia Ronchey he also did a series of interviews to great "masters" of culture like Ernst Jünger, Claude Lévi-Strauss, James Hillman, David Lodge, Keith Waldrop and Jean-Pierre Vernant . Selected bibliography. Scaraffia has published 14 essays and two novels, as well as having edited the Italian translations of more than 20 works by foreign authors (from Proust to Mérimée, from Stendhal to Maupassant).