Elisa Cozzi

elisa cozzi
Post-Award Member
The Queen's College
elisa.cozzi@queens.ox.ac.uk

 

Thesis: 'Italy and the Irish Romantics: Irish-Italian Networks, Narratives, and Literary Culture, 1785–1835'

 

Supervisor: Professor Fiona Stafford

Viva passed with no corrections on 13 December 2024.

 

Doctoral project: My thesis explores the literary connections between Italy and Ireland in the Romantic Period. It hinges on the recuperation of previously unexamined manuscript material that circulated across a series of literary networks in Ireland and Italy, focusing on the neglected Irish members of the Shelley circle in Pisa: Lady Mount Cashell, George William Tighe, and John Taaffe.

Funded by a Clarendon Scholarship and a Baillie Gifford Scholarship, in partnership with the AHRC.

 

Research interests: the Byron-Shelley circle; Irish Romanticism and cosmopolitan poetics; Anglo-Italian literature; literary coteries in the long eighteenth century; manuscript culture and the digital humanities; literary influence and allusion.

 

Teaching: I am a Retaining Fee Lecturer in English at Somerville College, where I teach FHS Paper 4 (Literature in English, 1660–1760) and Prelims Paper 4 (1910–Present). I have also taught undergraduate classes and tutorials for FHS Paper 5 (1760–1830) and Study Skills in English at Mansfield College and The Queen’s College. I am currently supervising a range of UG dissertations (topics include Keats and coteries, Gothic fiction, Shelley and Rimbaud, Wilde and Ecology). I am also a regular guest tutor at UG and MA level on ‘Irish Romanticism’ and ‘Irish Women’s Writing’ at the School of English and Drama, Queen Mary University of London. I am an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

 

Public engagement: I was the organiser and curator of a public symposium & exhibition on the cultural history of air ballooning, held at The Queen’s College in February 2024. In October 2022, I co-organised the interdisciplinary Vesuvius22 Conference, accompanied by a public lecture and an exhibition at the Weston Library and funded by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) and The Wellcome Trust.

 

Other projects: In 2022, I was the Programme Coordinator of the Environmental Humanities Programme at TORCH and the co-convenor, with Fiona Stafford, of the Environmental Humanities Lunchtime Seminar. I am a contributor to Bysshe Inigo Coffey’s digital database of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s illustrated editions, soon to be turned into a website hosted by the University of Oxford.

 

Publications:

  • Journal article: ‘P.B. Shelley, George William Tighe, and the Irish Roots of “The Sensitive-Plant”’. Romanticism 30.1 (2024), pp. 42-55.
  • Review: Valentina Varinelli, Italian Impromptus: A Study of P.B. Shelley's Writings in Italian with an Annotated Edition. European Romantic Review 35.1 (2024), pp. 187-191.
  • Review: Will Bowers, The Italian Idea: Anglo-Italian Radical Literary Culture, 1815–1823. The Keats-Shelley Review 36.1 (2022), pp. 47-50.

On-going and forthcoming:

  • Reference entry: ‘Taaffe, John’, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (submitted).
  • Reference entry: ‘The Poetical Works of Percy B. Shelley. Halifax: Milner and Sowerby, 1865’. Digital Gallery of Illustrated Editions of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1851-1922, edited by Bysshe Inigo Coffey. Website Database, University of Oxford (submitted).
  • Journal article: ‘Two New Manuscripts of Byron’s “The Irish Avatar” in the Holland House Papers’, Notes and Queries (in preparation)
  • Journal article: ‘Byron’s Irish Avatars’, The Byron Journal (in preparation)
  • Book chapter: ‘Leopardi’s Pisan Circle: The Accademia dei Lunatici, The Ausonian, and The First English Translation from the Operette Morali’. In Giacomo Leopardi: Reading, Reception and Legacy in Europe. Edited by Paul Hamilton and Francesco Marchionni (abstract accepted).
  • Co-authored journal article: '"Into the court of lost time": Lady Mount Cashell’s Unpublished Historical Novel The Chieftains of Erin’ (in preparation).

 

Conference papers and invited talks:

  • 'Two New Manuscripts of Byron’s “The Irish Avatar” in the Holland House Papers’, 49th International Byron Conference, University of Pisa, 2025.

  • 'Byron's Irish Avatars', Newstead Abbey Byron Conference, 2025

  • ‘Byron and Irish-Italian Freedom', Byron 200 Public Lecture Series, Keats-Shelley House, Rome, 2025.

  • ‘From Dánta Grá to Dante: Irish-Italian Genealogies, 1350-1850’, The Oxford Celtic Seminar, Jesus College, University of Oxford, 2024

  • ‘John Taaffe’s Defence of Poetry’. The Shelley Conference, Keats House, London, 2024.

  • ‘Dante and Cosmopolitan Poetics in Eighteenth-Century Ireland’. The Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society Conference (ECIS), University of Galway, 2024.

  • ‘Shelley, Éire, and Air Balloons’. Oxford Balloons, Enlightenment Science, and the Poetry of Flight. Symposium. The Queen’s College, Oxford, February 2024.

  • 'History and Nationhood in the Shelley Circle: Margaret Mount Cashell’s Unpublished Historical Novel The Chieftains of Erin'. The 16th Congress of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Rome, July 2023. 
  • 'The Taaffe Papers: Dispersal and Recovery'. Editing Romantic Letters Colloquium. University of Birmingham, May 2023.
  • 'P.B. Shelley, George William Tighe, and the Irish Roots of "The Sensitive-Plant"'. The Shelley Conference 2022. Keats House, London, July 2022.
  • 'Lady Mount Cashell’s Unpublished Historical Novel The Chieftains of Erin and Anglo-Irish-Italian Romantic Networks'. British Romanticism and Europe International Conference. Ascona, Switzerland, June 2022.
  • 'On First Looking into Lady Mount Cashell’s Historical Novel The Chieftains of Erin'. ECIS (Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society) Conference. University College Cork, June 2022.
  • 'P.B. Shelley, George William Tighe, and the Irish Roots of "The Sensitive-Plant"'. Romantic Research Seminar. Balliol College, University of Oxford, June 2022.
  • 'Irish-Italian Literary Networks, 1815-1835'. Romanticism Across Borders Research Seminar. University of Paris, May 2022.
  • 'Anglo-Irish-Italian Literary Networks from Dublin to Pisa, 1791-1835'. The Queen's College Symposium. University of Oxford, May 2021.
  • 'Dante among the Irish Romantics: The Case of John Taaffe’s A Comment on the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri (1822)'. Distance 2020 International Postgraduate Conference. August 2020, online.
  • 'In darkness found a dwelling place’: "The Prisoner of Chillon" and Byron’s turn away from Nature'. The 12th International Student Byron Conference. Messolonghi, Greece, May 2017.

 

Twitter: @_ElisaCozzi