Flavio GREGORI

Flavio Gregori is a full professor of English literature at Ca' Foscari University of Venice. He studied Modern literature at the University of Trieste, received a PhD in English studies from the University of Florence, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Genoa. He became an assistant professor of English language and literature at Ca' Foscari in 1995, an associate professor of English literature in 2001, and a full professor in 2008. Previously, he had worked as a teaching assistant in Italian language and studies at the universities of Giessen, Reading, Lancaster and at University College Dublin.

At Ca' Foscari, he was Pro-Rector and provost for the University's cultural activities and relations (2014-2020), the Rector's Delegate for Cultural and literary activities (2009-2011), Director of the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies (2011-2012), Head of the Programme in Modern and Contemporary Languages and Civilizations Literatures and the Master Programme in European, American and Postcolonial Literatures (2009-2010), Sub-head of the Programme in Modern and Contemporary Languages and Literatures and the Master Programme in European, American and Postcolonial Literatures (2005-2007), President of the Assessment Group for the Programme in Modern and Contemporary Languages and Literatures (2006), Member of the Board of the Doctoral Programme in Languages, Cultures, Societies and Language Science (2014-) and of the Master Programme in Intercultural Tourism System (2015-2025), president of the Scientific committee for the Celebrations of Ca' Foscari's 150th anniversary (2018), Co-president of the Foreign Languages School Committee for the Implementation of the L509 Reform (2000-2001), and Vice-president of the Interdepartmental Centre for Balkan and International Studies (2009-2010).

Since 2021 he was appointed director of the literary festival "Incroci di Civiltà/Crossings of Civilisations", having previously been a member of its board of directors (2009-2012, 2015-2020). He was a scientific advisor to the "Festival for the Earth" (Monaco Montecarlo-Venice, 2016-2020) and member of the scientific board of the "Ca' Foscari Short Film Festival". 

He founded and directs the journal "English Literature: Theories, Interpretations, Contexts" (Edizioni Ca' Foscari; Scopus; "A class" Anvur) and is advisor to the journals "The Scriblerian" (Temple University), "Le forme e la storia" ("A class" Anvur), "The University of Bucharest Review - Literary and Cultural Studies Series" (Scopus), "Forum for Contemporary Issues in Language and Literature" (Siedlce University of Natural Sciences and Humanities), "The Shandean" (Scopus, "A class" Anvur), and to the book series "Spatial Practices" (Brill), "Anglo-Sophia" (Mimesis), "Il Mito. Voci dal Presente" (ETS), and "Anglica" (ETS). He also directs the series "Collana di Letterature moderne" (Cafoscarina) and directed the series "Parole di celluloide: Letteratura e cinema" (L'Epos, 2007-2013).

He is a member of the following scientific and cultural associations: Associazione Nazionale dei Docenti di Anglistica (board of directors 2010-2014, 2018-2022); Associazione Italiana di Anglistica; British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies; Società Italiana Studi sul XVIII Secolo; Association for Adaptation Studies, International Laurence Sterne Foundation; Ehrenpreis Centre for Swift Studies, Münster; Fondazione Sigismondo Malatesta. He is a "socio corrispondente" of the Istituto Lombardo - Accademia di Scienze e Arti, and a member of the Ateneo Veneto.

He has been appointed as a visiting fellow at Northumbria University, Newcastle, for the period 2024-2027; he was a visiting professor at Queen Mary University of London in 2023, and a visiting scholar at various universities, including UCLA and Georgia State University.

His main field of research is the literature and culture of the long eighteenth century; he also works on modernist and postmodern literature, literary theory, the relationship between literature and cinema (on Stanley Kubrick, in particular), and the literary relationships between the UK and Italy and between Italy and the English-speaking countries (on which he co-directed a funded research – PRIN 2011-2013: "Italy through Postcolonial eyes").

He wrote on the collapse of Neoclassical epics and mock-heroic poetry (Rettorica dell'epica. La dissoluzione dell'epica neoclassica e le traduzioni omeriche di Alexander Pope, 1998; Il poemetto eroicomico e il declino dell'epica neoclassica in Inghilterra, 2011; In a nutshell. La miniaturizzazione dell’epica e la poesia eroicomica inglese dell’età neoclassica, 2020), Alexander Pope (A Poet on the Margins and at the Center, 2005), Laurence Sterne (Il wit nel 'Tristram Shandy'. Totalità e dialogo, 1987; Beginnings as continuity and discontinuity in 'Tristram Shandy', 2013; Mind, Sartorial Metaphors, and Sexual Imagery in Sterne’s 'Tristram Shandy', 2017; Sterne and Charron: Further Reflections on Sterne's Allusions to Of 'Wisdome', 2021; Facta Sunt Servanda: Facts, their Fetishes, and their Recollection in 'Tristram Shandy', 2022; ‘By a small misguidance of the affection’: War as Love in Laurence Sterne’s 'Tristram Shandy', 2025; Tristram Shandy’s comic modes: humour, satire, and learned wit, 2025; “So young a traveller, my little gentleman”: Homuncular smallness in Tristram Shandy, 2026; editor of the Meridiani Mondadori's La vita e le opinioni di Tristram Shandy, gentiluomo, 2016; pb repr. 2018), Jonathan Swift and the Scriblerians (The Italian Reception of Swift, 2005; Inverted Sublime: Humorism in the Italian Reception of Swift and Sterne, 2008; The ‘Audacious’ Art of Walking: The Metropolis and the Proto-flâneur in John Gay’s 'Trivia', 2005, repr. 2023; Here Comes the Scriblerian Flood: Apocalypse, Betrayal, and Mock-Redemption in 'Three Hours after Marriage', 2025; editor of J. Swift, La musa e il decano. Antologia poetica, 1994, and of J. Gay, Tre ore dopo il matrimonio, 2019), and Stanley Kubrick and film studies ('A Clockwork Orange' da Burgess a Kubrick, 2004; Youthful Resentment, Bourgeois (Anti-)Heroism and Sublime Unrest: Conrad’s 'The Duel' and Ridley Scott’s 'The Duellists', 2010; '2001: Odissea nello spazio'. Percorsi nel film di Stanley Kubrick, 2021; Satira hogarthiana, tempo e malinconia nel 'Barry Lyndon' di Stanley Kubrick, 2025).

Currently, he is working on the ideas of happiness and unhappiness in eighteenth-century literature and culture, as well as on the reception and adaptation in and of eighteenth-century literature.