Dinatella Martinelli
Novecento in Saggio | Harvard 2015 Edition
Early Career Scholarly Work on 20thC Italian Creative Prose
Previous Winners Panel Judge
Donatella Martinelli is Associate Professor in History of the Italian Language at the University of Parma. She graduated in the Liberal Arts with a thesis on Fede e Bellezza analysed through the two dictionaries by Niccolò Tommaseo (il Dizionario della lingua italiana and il Dizionario dei sinonimi della lingua italiana). She then focused on Niccolò Tommaseo’s work and other subjects related to 19thc literature, language and lexicography. As a result of being in charge of the Office of Philology at the Crusca Academy (1991), led by Prof. Domenico De Robertis, she began to work on material preserved in the Fondo Tommaseo at the National Library of Florence, this as part of a study of the history of the Dizionario della Lingua Italiana. She went on to publish commented editions of Poema Paradisiaco by D’Annunzio (1995) and Fede e Bellezza by Tommaseo (1997). She was invited by Dante Isella to join the Editorial Board of I quaderni dell’Ingegnere, and subsequently contributed essays on the relationship between Gadda and the classical Latin authors, as well as on the documentary sources of Adalgisa (in particular, Corriere della Sera). In 2010 she was Overall Winner of the first edition of Crolla Amato Gadda. She is currently collaborating on the National Edition of Manzoni’s works, where she is in charge of editing the Postille. She also edited the translations made by Tommaseo of Bucoliche e Georgiche by Virgilio for the Bembo Foundation’s series «Classici italiani». She is currently completing a critical edition of I Promessi Sposi which draws on the first edition of I Promessi Sposi (the so-called Ventisettana). Since 2006 she has been in charge of teaching written Italian language on the Bachelor programme in written and hypertextual communication sciences in the Arts and Philosophy Department at Parma University.
