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Centre for the Study of the Renaissance

Dr Marta Celati

Honorary Research Fellow

Email: Marta.Celati@warwick.ac.uk

I am Professor of Medieval and Humanist Literature at the University of Pisa and Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance at the University of Warwick. From 2021 to 2024 (June) I was Senior Lecturer at the University of Pisa (Programme 'Rita Levi Montalcini' of the Italian Ministry of University and Research).

From October 2018 to May 2021 I have worked at the CSR as a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow and I contributed to the Centre's teaching activity for both undergraduate and postgraduate students. Before coming to Warwick, I was Frances Yates Post-doctoral Fellow at the Warburg Institute, with an interdisciplinary project entitled ‘Princely Ideology in Pre-Machiavellian Literature and Art: Giuniano Maio’s De maiestate’ (January-May 2018). I was Lector in Italian language at the University of Oxford, Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages (2018), and I have worked as Part-time Lecturer in Italian Literature at the same Faculty and at Keble College and other Colleges (2014-2019). I also contributed to the MSt module in ‘Classical and vernacular cultures in the Italian Renaissance’ at the University of Oxford. In general, I designed and taught modules on a wide range of topics and authors in Italian Humanism and Renaissance, from the 15th to 16th century. Before moving to UK, from 2010 to 2013 I worked as Teaching Fellow at the University of Pisa (Department of Italian Studies), where I taught ‘Medieval and Humanist Philology’, for both BA and MA degrees, and several modules on Medieval and Renaissance authors: Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio and fifteenth-century literature.

I completed my Italian doctorate in ‘Medieval and Humanist Philology’ (2013) at the University of Pisa and my thesis provided a complete edition of Poliziano’s Commentary on the Pazzi conspiracy, which was published in 2015. In 2017 I got a PhD in Italian Studies at the University of Oxford, funded by a Clarendon Scholarship, with a thesis on the theme of conspiracy in fifteenth-century Italian literature, which has been recommended for publication at the Oxford University Press and resulted in the monograph Conspiracy Literature in Early Renaissance Italy: Historiography and Princely Ideologogy, OUP.

I have written articles on various authors and topics, such as the relationship between politics and literature, the classical legacy in Renaissance works, the art of printing in fifteenth-century Italy, and the interaction between literature and visual culture.

My current research project investigates the definition and representation of the figure of the prince and the tyrant in Italian Renaissance literature, focusing on the interplay between treatises and historical works. My aim is to adopt innovative perspectives of analysis in linking these genres and investigating a corpus of both Italian and Neo-Latin texts, with an interdisciplinary method.

Research and teaching interests

  • Italian Renaissance Literature; Humanism; Neo-Latin Studies; Classical tradition; Historiography; Political thought; Relationship between literature and visual culture; History of the book; Philology

Selected publications

Books
  • Angelo Poliziano, Coniurationis commentarium, con introduzione, traduzione e commento, ed. M. Celati (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2015).

 https://www.ediorso.it/coniurationis-commentarium.html

  • Conspiracy Literature in Early Renaissance Italy: Historiography and Princely Ideology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).

 https://global.oup.com/academic/product/conspiracy-literature-in-early-renaissance-italy-9780198863625?cc=it&lang=en&

  • Orazio Romano, Porcaria, edizione critica, introduzione e commento, ed. M. Celati (Roma: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo, 2022).
Journal articles and book chapters
  • ‘L’editio princeps fiorentina del Coniurationis commentarium di Angelo Poliziano e il tipografo Niccolò Tedesco: nuove acquisizioni’, Archivum Mentis, 2 (2013), pp. 166-188.
  • ‘La seconda redazione del Coniurationis commentarium di Angelo Poliziano e l’edizione romana di Johannes Bulle’, Humanistica. An International Journal of Early Renaissance Studies, 11, 1-2 (2016), pp. 283-292.
  • ‘Violence and Revenge in Fifteenth-century Political Literature’, Annali d’Italianistica, 35 (2017), pp. 71-88.
  • ‘Renaissance Conspiracies in Nineteenth-century Italian Art: The Rediscovery of History between Literature and Visual Culture’, Comitatus. A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 48 (2017), pp 161-184.
  • ‘Irony, Historiography, and Political Criticism: Alberti’s Porcaria coniuratio’, Albertiana, 23, 2 (2020), Special Issue: Alberti Ludens: In Memory of Cecil Grayson, edited by Francesco Furlan, Martin McLaughlin, Hartmut Wulfram, vol. 2, pp. 207-224.
  • ‘The Conflict after the Pazzi Conspiracy and Poliziano’s Coniurationis commentarium: Literature, Law and Politics’, in Forum Italicum, Special Issue: The Interplay of Law & Literature in the Italian Tradition, 53 (2019), pp. 327-349.
  • ‘Teoria politica e realtà storica nel De maiestate di Giuniano Maio: tra letteratura e arte figurativa’, Medioevo e Rinascimento, 32/n.s, 29 (2018), pp. 203-235.
  • 'Angelo Poliziano's Political Orations: The Humanist in government', Modern Language Review, 115, 2 (2020), pp. 318-338.
  • 'La virtù e la storia: il principe nel De maiestate di Giuniano Maio', Archivum Mentis, 8 (2019), pp. 71-102.
  • ‘Filelfo e Carlo Gonzaga: l’Oratio de laudibus illustris Karoli Gonzagae, tra storia, oratoria e teoria politica’, in Francesco Filelfo, Opere storiche e politiche. I. Filelfo e la storia, ed. by G. Albanese (Firenze: SISMEL, 2017), pp. 127-144.
  • ‘Humanist Epic between Classical Legacy and Contemporary History: Orazio Romano’s Porcaria (1453)’, in Making and Rethinking Renaissance between Greek and Latin in 15-16th century Europe, ed. by S. Harrison and G. Abbamonte (Berlin - New York, Walter de Gruyter, Series Trend in Classics: 2019), pp. 231-249.
  • ‘Imitation and Allusion in Machiavelli’s Istorie Fiorentine, between Contemporary Sources and Classical Models’, in Imitative Series and Clusters from Classical to Early Modern Literature’, ed. C. Burrow, S. Harrison, M. McLaughlin, E. Tarantino (Berlin, New York: Walter De Gruyter: 2020), pp. 205-222.
  • 'Classical Sources and a New Theory of the State in the Renaissance: A Neapolitan Mirror for Princes', Annali d'Italianistica, 38 (2020), 'Special issue: Nation(s) and Translation', pp. 19-45.
  • 'Condemning Political Dissent and Anti-Princely Views in Renaissance Milanese Literature', in True Warriors? Negociating Dissent in the Intellectual Debate (C. 1100-1700), LECTIO. Studies in the Transmission of Texts & Ideas' (Turnhout: Brepols), in press.
  • 'Orazio Romano e la Porcaria nella Roma di Niccolò V: il poema nella politica culturale papale', Bullettino dell'Istituto storico italiano per il Medioevo, 123 (2021), pp. 299-338.
  • 'Performing Power in Early Renaissance Italy: Princely Image and Consensus in Political Treatises', Royal Studies Journal, 8, 1 (2021), pp. 35-53.
Reviews
  • Rev. Reading and Writing History from Bruni to Windschuttle. Essays in Honour of Gary Ianziti, ed. by Christian Thorsten Callisen, Annali d’Italianistica, 33 (2015), pp. 385-387.
  • Rev. Dante, Opere, vol. II, ed. by M. Santagata, Modern Language Review, 112, 2 (2017), pp. 262-264.
  • Rev. Vernacular Aristotelianism in Italy from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Century, ed. by L. Bianchi, S. Gilson, and J. Kraye, Modern Language Review, 113, 2 (2018), pp. 413-414.
Electronic editions

Editions in the Digital archive DaMA-Dante Medieval Archive (http://perunaenciclopediadantescadigitale.eu/):

  • Alcuin of York, Conflictus veris et hiemis; De cuculo
  • Teodulus, Egloga
  • Sedulius Scotus, Sacra Camena; De rosae liliique certamine; Tytirus in silvis (2010)

Main Fellowships, Awards, and Grants

- Programme 'Rita Levi Montalcini', Italian Ministry of University and Research (2021-2024)

- Leverhulme Research Fellowship, University of Warwick (2018-2021)

- Warburg Institute, Frances A. Yates Post-Doctoral Fellowship (January-May 2018)

- Dr Greg Wells Research Award, University of Warwick, Centre for the Study of the Renaissance (2019)

- Society of Italian Studies, Grant for the Organization of the International Conference 'Rethinking the Italian Renaissance. A Conference in memory of Paola Tomè', University of Oxford, 26 September 2019.

- University of Oxford, Clarendon Scholarship (2013-2016)

- St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, Justin Gosling Research Award (2013-2016)

- St Edmund Hall (Oxford), Travel Grant for the XXXV Annual Conference of the American Association of Italian Studies, University of Boulder, Colorado (March 26-28, 2015)

- St Edmund Hall (Oxford), Grant for Research at the Vatican Library, Utrecht University Library (December 2013)

- University of Pisa, Fellowship for Research at the British Library (London), Bodleian Library (Oxford) (April 2012)

- University of Pisa, Fellowship for Research at the Vatican Library, Casanatense Library and Corsiniana Library in Rome; Laurentian Library and State Archive in Florence (May 2011)

- Three-years PhD Scholarship, University of Pisa (2010-2012)

- Grant for the International conference on ‘The age of the city states’. Scuola di alti studi dottorali sulla Civiltà comunale - University of Florence (22-26 June 2009)

Qualifications

  • PhD: Italian Studies, University of Oxford
  • PhD: Medieval and Humanist Philology, University of Pisa
  • M.A.: Italian literature and Language, University of Pisa
  • B.A.: Lettere, University of Pisa