Introduction:

I am a part-time PhD student in my last year of studies in the Department of English and Contemporary Literary Studies. I have a keen interest in World Literature developed along the course of my life.

Native Italian, my interest in languages has started in secondary school with the study of Latin and Ancient Greek and, of course, English. I have graduated in Foreign Languages and Literatures (English and French) at the University of Bari and then completed two years of a specialization in the same but with a particular attention to philology and philosophy of language. Here I have integrated my interest in languages with the study of Russian.

In the UK I have obtained an MA in English: Contemporary Fiction from the University of Winchester. The positive impressions received during that experience convinced me to stay in the country for my PhD.

My passion for languages and language itself has moved forward parallel with a constant, personal interest in contemporary world literatures along with other media such as comic books and films, which I hope to develop in future research.

Research:

My research explores the ramifications of violence in contemporary world fiction. I have started the work in an attempt to understand the relationship between narrative and violence and I have ended up envisioning a rhetoric of contemporary literature.

Narratives have power and this power is present not only at the level of the content of the stories but also, and more invisibly, at the technical level. Point of view and figures of speech are only a part of my analysis.

The ultimate concern of my research is to explore an ethics of contemporary narratives, which accompanies their rhetoric. I explore the presence of an ethics of ecocentrism in contemporary epic.

Supervisor:

Professor Thomas Docherty, Professor of English and of Comparative Literature

Claudio Murgia

C dot Murgia at warwick dot ac dot uk