Carlo Testa received his Laurea in Lettere from the University of Milan in 1978 and did his graduate work in German, French and Comparative Literature in California (UC Davis and Berkeley) in the 1980s.

At UBC since 1992, he currently teaches courses on 19th- and 20th-century Italy (literature, cinema, political and social history) and theoretical issues of a comparative nature.

Interests

• Italian CIV
  • History of Fascism. History of science and technology in the Italian peninsula from antiquity to the present. Contemporary politics.
• Italian Literature, 19th-20th Century
  • The Bildungsroman. History of poetry. Translation of classics of European poetry into Italian. Translation theory.
• Comparative Literature
  • Organic Romanticism: the non-rationalist, non-objectifying rapport to Nature. Utopian / paradisian narratives, especially of the Romantic age. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century novel in Europe. The pact with the devil in literature from Goethe to Bulgakov. Representations of money in literature. The novel of social superfluousness vs. integration: «Portraits of ineptitude» as subversion of mainstream ideology («Être un homme utile m’a toujours paru quelque chose de bien hideux»: Baudelaire). Religion and literature: Tolstoy. Nationalism and the nationalist canon. Twentieth-century rear-garde poetry, from Blok to Pasternak, via Esenin, Rilke, Mandelštam and Cvetaeva.
• History of Cinema
  • History of post-WWII Italian cinema, particularly in its relation to literature, society, politics, the economy. Representations of political violence.
• Theory/Film Studies
  • Pedagogical filmmaking: Rossellini. Russian semiotics: Lotman. Literature and film in Èizenštein. Re-creation of art forms across media, particularly into film.

Current Projects

• Cornucopia europea 850-1950: Antologia di classici della poesia europea tradotti in italiano, Vancouver: Finisterrae, 2022 (proofreading stage). From the 9th-century Bavarian-East Frankish apocalyptic Muspilli to the poem “Nobelevskaja premija” by Pasternak. About 400 pages.
• “Aleksandr Blok: Sette Rime intorno alla Bella Madonna (Stichi o Prekrasnoj Dame, 1904) disperse e ritrovate.” Forthcoming in the journal GRADIVA (SUNY at Stony Brook), Fall 2022.

Recent Publications

Last few published items only; for previously published items, see the 3 Academia.edu websites indicated at the end of this page.

* I, Pinocchio, the Real and Only One: Confessions of a Puppet who Converted from Matter to Soul by Giuseppino “Pinocchio” Collodi.  Ed., trans. C.T.
Vancouver: Finisterrae, 2022. Series ISOLA VERDE. Voci dal limine 9. (116 pp.)
Distributed and immediately available with Amazon.it (Kindle version only as of 2022) @: https://www.amazon.ca/Pinocchio-Real-Only-One-Confessions-ebook/dp/B09YN7W893/

* Rime intorno alla Bella Madonna (Стихи о Прекрасной Даме) di Aleksandr Blok. Edizione del centenario blokiano (1921-2021) a cura di C.T.
Vancouver: Finisterrae, 2021. Series ISOLA VERDE. Voci dal limine.
Tomes 2, 3, 4, 5 (total about 600 pages)
Distributed and immediately available with Amazon.it (Kindle version only as of 2021) @: https://www.amazon.it/s?k=finisterrae+blok+madonna

Tome 1: Più che un’Avtobiografija.
(A) Presentazione di C.T.: Les Fleurs du Bien. Riflessioni su Aleksandr Blok nel primo centenario della morte.
(B) Più che un’Avtobiografija di Aleksandr Blok secondo Avril Pyman. Traduzione dall’inglese in italiano ed edizione critica con note originali in russo di C.T.
[Pp. 234]
ISBN 978-0-9947415-3-0

* Deutschland, una fiaba invernale. Pamphlet per una nuova Europa di Heinrich Heine. Tradotto in verso e rima italiani da C.T.: EDITIO TRILINGUIS.
Vancouver: Finisterrae, 2021. Series ISOLA VERDE. Voci dal limine.
[Pp. 217]
ISBN 978-0-9947415-9-2

* I Sonetti a Orfeo di Rainer Maria Rilke. Tradotti in verso e rima italiani da C.T.
Intro., ed., trans. in Italian verse and rhyme by C.T.
Bergamo: Moretti & Vitali, 2014.
[Pp. 218]
ISBN 978-8871-865-768

Other Selected Publications

Books

• Masters of Two Arts: Re-creation of European Literatures in Italian Cinema (2002)
• Italian Cinema and Modern European Literatures: French, German, Russian, 1945-2000 (2002)
• Desire and the Devil: Demonic Contracts in French and European Literature (1991)

Edited books

• Transmutatio:  La via ermetica alla felicità – The Hermetic Way to Happiness (2013).  Co-edited with Daniela Boccassini.
• Poet of Civic Courage: The Films of Francesco Rosi (1996)

Websites

1. Other research / Forschung:
https://wix.academia.edu/carlotesta

2. Carlo Testa OPERA SOMNIA:
https://independent.academia.edu/carlotesta2

3. Finisterrae Edizioni Publisher Maison d’Édition Издательство Verlag – Vancouver B.C. Canada:
https://independent.academia.edu/CARLOTESTA10

No awards, be they for Teaching, Research, Killam prizes, Membership of an Academy or a Distinguished society or similia.