Giovanna Di Martino

Leventis Research Fellow

Email:  g.martino@ucl.ac.uk

Research interests: ancient Greek and Roman drama and its reception, theatre history as well as theatre translation theory and practice, early modern literature and drama.

IRIS research profile

I completed my undergraduate (2012) and Master’s (2014) degrees in Classics at the University of Milan, with a period of study at the University of Notre Dame (Indiana), where I wrote a thesis (now a book) on the reception of Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes in the US. I came to the UK in 2015 as a postgraduate student in Classical Languages and Literature at St Hilda’s (Oxford), with a project on the reception of Aeschylus’ tragedies in Italy (1550-1960), supervised by Fiona Macintosh and in collaboration with the APGRD (Oxford). I was lecturer in Classics at St Hilda’s (2017-2019) and St Anne’s (2019-2020) before coming to UCL. 

My current postdoctoral research project focuses on early modern translations of ancient Greek drama in Europe, particularly into Italian (1400-1600). It fills a gap in the history of theatre translation theory and practice, of ancient Greek drama, and of the Italian vernacular and Latin as they developed through, and were influenced by, translation practice; it also explores early modern Italian translations comparatively with an eye to French and English translations of the same plays in the same period and does so through theatre practice (see below). Indeed, as translations of dramatic scripts, these early modern texts inevitably imply and include considerations and problems relating to dramaturgy, which can be consciously addressed or lie dormant, but which inevitably put translation into dialogue with the theatrical and performance culture of the time period into which the source text is being adapted and which fully justify, if not even require, the use of performance as a medium to analyse them (see Di Martino & Baudou 2023 listed below).

I am also interested in the reception of ancient Greek drama in Italy during Fascism and am currently preparing the edition of an unpublished translation of Aeschylus’ Oresteia during Fascism together with two special issues I am co-editing on the topic with Eleftheria Ioannidou (Groningen) and Sara Troiani (Coimbra) (see in publications below).

In these years, I have co-led and organised workshops that link theatre practice with the study, translation and research of ancient Greek drama, with both Oxford and UCL students as well as professional actors (see full list below). The latest project I have co-led and acted as dramaturg on was with Italian theatre director Marco Martinelli (Teatro delle Albe) on early modern translations of Aristophanes’ Wealth with students from UCL and Parma as well as school students from the state sector in London. This was part of a conference I co-organised with Francesca Bortoletti (Parma) as part of the EU-funded Widening International Didactics and Education Programme in Parma.

I am currently part of the research project Translating Ancient Drama at the Archive of Performance of Greek and Roman Drama (Oxford), and responsible for the ‘early modern’ and ‘theatre translation workshops’ sections of the project. 

I have also been involved in and organised outreach projects on Greek theatre and the ancient world more generally: I am the co-founder and co-leader of the APGRD Blog and APGRD Podcast (2019-present), as well as of UCL Ancient World New Voices podcast series. I acted as Academic Advisor for UCL Odyssey Festival (2021), Euripides Electra (2022), and Plato’s Symposium (2023) for which I organised pre-show talks (the recordings of which are now available online), theatre workshops, living archives (browsable on our website), and study guides on the Odyssey, ancient epic and its reception, and the production and staging of ancient Greek drama, ancient and modern, as well as on Euripides and his reception more specifically. I am also co-curator of the archive ‘UCL Classical Play: Previous Productions’.

Most Recent Theatre Workshops (organised and co-led) include:

October 2022 & February 2023: Early Modern Aristophanes in Performance
Director: Marco Martinelli, Teatro delle Albe; Dramaturg: Giovanna Di Martino
Participants from the University of Parma, from UCL, and from Liceo Toschi and Liceo Romagnosi in Parma; and from Parma, from UCL, from St Olave’s Grammar School, from the Jewish Community Secondary School, and from La Sainte Union, Camden in London
Texts: Aristophanes, Plutus in the following early modern translations:

• Eufrosino Bonini, 1513: Commedia di Justitia (used in Parma and London)
• Thomas Randolph e Francis Jacques, 1651: Ploutophthalmia ploutogamia: A pleasant comedie, entituled Hey for honesty, down with knavery; translated out of Aristophanes his Plutus (used in Parma and London)
• H. H. B. (H. H. Burnell?), 1659: The World’s Idol, Plutus a comedy (used in London)

Funding: the Widening International Didactics and Education Programme (w.i.d.e; 2022, Parma), the Classical Association, the Institute of Classical Studies, the Gilbert Trust Fund, UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, and the Leventis Foundation
Research Output: forthcoming chapter by Giovanna Di Martino, Marco Martinelli, and Francesca Bortoletti in Memory and Performance: Classical Reception in Early Modern Festivals

See a blog entry about this event here.
For a full list, please click here.

Most Recent Conferences (organised) Include:

24th June at UCL, ‘Translating Ancient Greek Drama (1600-1800)’, in collaboration with UCL Centre for Early Modern Exchanges, Paris 13, University of Grenoble, and the APGRD (Oxford). Link here
13th-14th October 2022, University of Parma; 23rd-24th February 2023, UCL: ‘Memory and Performance: Classical Reception in Early Modern Festivals (15th-18th Century)’, co-organised with the University of Parma, and in collaboration with UCL Centre for Early Modern Exchanges, the APGRD (Oxford), and supported by the Leventis Foundation. Link here.

For a full list, please click here.

Upcoming Events:

Co-Director of the Fall School 2023 Memory and Performance. Classical Reception in the Performing Arts, funded within the Erasmus+ Intensive Programme, with the participation of the University of Parma, the Centre d'Études Supérieures de la Renaissance (CESR)-Universitè Rabelais Tour, Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci, the University of Groningen, Université Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle, Université Paris Nanterre, Université Paris 13 Nord, and in collaboration with University College London and NYU. Link to programme.

Co-Organiser of ‘Translating Aristophanes’ Plutus’ at the University of Grenoble, May 2024, Grenoble (programme TBC).

Publications:

Books
    G. Di Martino, Translating and Adapting Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes in America, Skenè: Verona (2020). https://textsandstudies.skeneproject.it/index.php/TS/catalog/book/66.
    M. Bastin-Hammou, G. Di Martino, C. Dudouyt, L. Jackson (eds.), Translating Ancient Greek Drama in Early Modern Europe: Theory and Practice (15th-16th Centuries), (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2003).

Book chapters:
    G. Di Martino, ‘Translating Ancient Greek Tragedy in 16th-Century Italy’, in: M. Bastin-Hammou, G. Di Martino, C. Dudouyt, L. Jackson (eds.), Translating Ancient Greek Drama in Early Modern Europe: Theory and Practice (15th-16th Centuries), (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2003), 137–158.
    G. Di Martino and E. Baudou, ‘Early Modern Iphigenias and Practice Research’,  in: M. Bastin-Hammou, G. Di Martino, C. Dudouyt, L. Jackson (eds.), Translating Ancient Greek Drama in Early Modern Europe: Theory and Practice (15th-16th Centuries), (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2003), 255–292.
    G. Di Martino and C. Dudouyt, ‘Introduction’, in: M. Bastin-Hammou, G. Di Martino, C. Dudouyt, L. Jackson (eds.), Translating Ancient Greek Drama in Early Modern Europe: Theory and Practice (15th-16th Centuries), (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2003), 1-16.
    G. Di Martino, ‘The Reception of Aeschylus in Modern Times: Translation’, in Andreas Markantonatos & Alan H. Sommerstein, Brill’s Companion to Aeschylus (forthcoming 2024).
    G. Di Martino, ‘The Reception of Aeschylus in sixteenth-century Italy: the case of Coriolano Martirano’s Prometheus Bound (1556)’, in S. Harrison and G. Abbamonte (eds), Making and Rethinking Renaissance. Between Greek and Latin in 15th-16th-century Europe, De Gruyter: Berlin (2019), 125-42.

Journal Articles:
    G. Di Martino, ‘Aeschylus at the Crossroads between ‘Modernities’, in: Performing Ancient Greece in Fascist Italy: Modernism and the Classical in CRJ (OUP) (forthcoming 2023).
    G. Di Martino, E. Ioannidou, S. Troiani ‘Introduction’, in: Performing Ancient Greece in Fascist Italy: Modernism and the Classical in CRJ (OUP) (forthcoming 2023).
    G. Di Martino, ‘Archiving and Documenting Classical Performance during and after Fascism’, in: Re-Living the Classical Past: Performative Uses of Antiquity under Fascism, in: Fascism: Comparative Fascist Studies (forthcoming 2023).
    G. Di Martino, E. Ioannidou, S. Troiani ‘Introduction’, in: Re-Living the Classical Past: Performative Uses of Antiquity under Fascism, in: Fascism: Comparative Fascist Studies (forthcoming 2023).
    G. Di Martino, ‘Tradurre il teatro per il teatro. Presenza e assenza di dialoghi in due adattamenti cinquecenteschi del Prometeo incatenato di Eschilo, in: A. Bonandini, L. Boulègue, G. Ieranò (eds.), Le Dialogue de l’Antiquité à l’âge humaniste. Péripéties d’un genre dramatique et philosophique, Classiques Garnier - Series: Lectures de la Renaissance latine, n° 18, 371-389
    G. Di Martino and F. Macintosh, ‘Archiving and Interpreting Greek Theatre: the archive as engine room and digital hub’, FuturoClassico (n. 7 2021) https://ojs.cimedoc.uniba.it/index.php/fc/article/view/1388.
    G. Di Martino, ‘L’Agamennone di Eschilo. Italianità e Sicilianità alla vigilia della Grande Guerra’, FuturoClassico 5 (2019) 174-208. https://ojs.cimedoc.uniba.it/index.php/fc/article/view/1094.
    G. Di Martino, ‘Vittorio Alfieri’s tormented relationship with Aeschylus: Agamennone between Tradition and Innovation’, Anabases 29 (2019), 121-133. https://journals.openedition.org/anabases/8704.
    G. Di Martino, ‘Tradurre (e interpretare) Alcesti. La versione di Massimiliano Civica’, in Stratagemmi 32 (2015) 59-102. 
    G. Di Martino and F. Macintosh, ‘Alcestis on the British Stage. Interview with Fiona Macintosh’, in Stratagemmi 32 (2015) 139-151. 

Book Reviews:
    G. Di Martino, ‘Olga Taxidou. Greek Tragedy and Modernist Performance: Hellenism as Theatricality’, Modern drama 66.1 (2023): 137–139.
    G. Di Martino, ‘Lamari (A.), Montanari (F.) and Novokhatko (A.) (eds), Fragmentation in Ancient Greek Drama (Trends in Classics – Supplementary Volumes 84). Berlin and Boson: De Gruyter, 2020. Pp. 719, illus. £136.50. 9783110621020’, in The Journal of Hellenic Studies (2023), 1-2.
    G. Di Martino, ‘Luis Alfaro, The Greek Trilogy of Luis Alfaro. Edited by Rosa Andújar, Methuen Drama series, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020, pp. 304’, Skenè Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies 7:1 (2021), 231-8. https://skenejournal.skeneproject.it/index.php/JTDS/article/view/311.
    G. Di Martino, ‘Troiane classiche e contemporanee, ed. Francesco Citti, Alessandro Iannucci and Antonio Ziosi, Spudasmata, 173’, IJCT (2019).