Gaetano LALOMIA
Keywords
Short narrative between East and West
· Medieval romance in France, Spain and Italy
· Chivalric epic poem
· Medieval and Renaissance visual culture
In 2002, he won the comparative evaluation for a position as a researcher for the scientific-disciplinary sector L-Fil-Lett/09 Romance Linguistics and Philology. On December 30, 2002, he took up office as a researcher at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures – Ragusa campus, and was assigned the teaching post for Romance Philology at the same institution.
In 2013, he obtained the national scientific qualification as an associate professor, and in 2014 she/he was appointed to the role at the University of Catania (Department of Humanities).
In 2017, she/he obtained the national scientific qualification as a full professor.
Academic positions held:
· Deputy Director of the Department of Humanities (from November 1, 2021 to October 31, 2025)
· Rector's Delegate for the Institutional Coordination of the Erasmus Program (from October 2019 to October 2021)
· Coordinator of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures and Comparative and Cultural Studies of DISUM (from September 2016 to September 2020)
Chair of the Master's Degree Course in Comparative Languages and Literatures (LM37) of DISUM (from September 2019 to October 2021)
He has focused on medieval Italian, Castilian, Catalan, and French literatures.
The literary genres studied revolve fundamentally around storytelling, specifically focusing on short narrative and romance. Regarding the former, she/he concentrated on Kalila e Dimna, deepening several key thematic aspects such as comedy, the representation of conflict, and the verbalization of lies. He has also shown interest in other short narrative texts (in Italian, Catalan, and medieval French) that are somewhat influenced by Eastern short stories, aiming to study their macrotextual structure. This work also considers the centrality of the concept of transmission of knowledge and memory—two fundamental aspects of Eastern gnomic-sapiential literature reaching the West. Alongside this line of research, she/he intensified studies on the side of metaphorical conceptualization, with particular attention to the categories of "love" and "anger". The interest in relations between East and West also produced an analysis of the links between the Decameron and the One Thousand and One Nights, thereby addressing the central issue of the dissemination of the Eastern collection in the medieval Western Romance world.
On the side of the medieval romance, she/he focused attention on the Romance prose narrative forms produced in Castile during the Middle Ages, with particular reference to the chronotope and the issue of genre mixing underlying these texts. Regarding the chronotope, a noteworthy contribution is the monographic study on romances produced from the 14th to the 16th century. Furthermore, there have been contributions aimed at exploring thematic aspects such as prison and the "outrage/revenge" relationship. Belonging to this line of research is also the critical edition of Olivier di Castiglia, a romance that is an Italian translation of a 15th-century Spanish version, which, in turn, is a translation of a late-medieval French version.
In the field of Romance narrative, she/he has also undertaken the study of the Alexander romance. In fact, a monograph is entirely dedicated to the ecdotic problems presented by the Castilian version of the romance. Meanwhile, a recent study on space in the main medieval romances (the Old French versions by Alexandre de Bernai and Thomas de Kent, and the Castilian version) highlights how the perception of the space conquered by Alexander is central to the narrative, yet differs from text to text.
For the past few years, she/he has approached visual culture studies, applying their theories to medieval literary production. Evidence of this new line of research includes a series of articles published in conference proceedings and journals, as well as the monograph titled Che le orecchie ascoltino e gli occhi vedano. Immagini e narrazioni nell’«Olivier de Castille» (Duetredue, Lentini, 2021, Quaderni di Arabeschi 12), and La sala di Malagigi. L’ékphrasis come chiave di lettura di un cantare del XIV secolo (Duetredue, Lentini, 2022, Quaderni di Arabeschi 14).
In 2014, he led a research project funded by the University of Catania focusing on time and space in the Alexander romances between East and West, giving rise to the university-funded project titled ARA (Atlante dei Romanzi di Alessandro / Atlas of Alexander Romances).
For the 2020-2022 biennium, he is the coordinator of the project funded by the University of Catania titled Eros romanzo e moderno.
In 2022, he is the P.I. (Principal Investigator) of the PRIN project titled ArDiTeHis (Digital Archive of Spanish Text) and the digital editions of certain Spanish texts from the XVI to the XIX centuries.
He is a member of several scientific associations:
· AHLM (Asociación Hispánica de Literatura Medieval)
· SIFR (Società Italiana dei Filologi Romanzi), of which she/he is a member of the National Board
· IAS (International Arthurian Society)
Scientific journals
· Co-director of the journal «Critica del Testo»
· Editor-in-chief (Direttore responsabile) of the journal «Le forme e la storia»
Editor-in-chief (Direttore responsabile) of the journal «Corpi plurali»