Vedelago Angelica

Angelica Vedelago is tenure-track researcher of English Literature at the University of the Aosta Valley.

After graduating cum laude from Liceo Ginnasio Statale “Antonio Canova” (2010), she completed her BA and MA in Modern Languages and Literature at the University of Padua (2013 and 2015 respectively, both cum laude), benefitting from two scholarships for two exchange programmes (Erasmus at the University of St Andrews, UK; German Service for Academic Exchange at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Germany). After an MSt in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford in 2016, she earned a PhD in English Literature from the University of Padua in 2020 with the support of the CARIPARO Foundation.

After teaching English Literature as a stipendary lecturer at the University of Ferrara, she worked as postdoctoral researcher at the University of Verona within the Project of National Relevance “Classical Receptions in Early Modern English Drama”. From 2022 to 2024 she was Alexander-von-Humboldt Fellow at the University of Hamburg and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, where she worked on the interplay between Greek tragedy and Christianity in early modern Italian and English drama.

In 2023 she passed the national selection for high school teachers of English language and literature (“Concoso Ordinario 2020”) in the Region Veneto.

She is author of two forthcoming monographs: The Reception of Sophocles’ Antigone in Early Modern English Drama (under contract with Oxford University Press) and the edition of Thomas May’s The Tragedy of Antigone (under contract with MHRA). She is also currently editing Thomas Watson’s Latin translation of Sophocles’Antigone for Brill. She has contributed to various volumes with De Gruyter, Brepols and Droz as well as double-blind peer-reviewed articles for Renaissance Studies, Textus and The International Journal of the Classical Tradition.

Publications

Monographs (all under contract)

forthcoming     Sophocles’ Antigone in Early Modern English Drama, Oxford University Press.

forthcoming     Thomas May, The Tragedy of Antigone, The Theban Princess, edited by Angelica Vedelago, MHRA.

forthcoming     Thomas Watson, Sophoclis Antigone, edited and with an introduction by Angelica Vedelago, Brill.

Journal articles

2025              “‘From Tiber to ThAImes’: An Eco-Critical Approach to Literary Rivers from Shakespeare to AI-generated Art”, Textus, 219-238.

2023              “Pelopidarum Secunda: A ‘Site of Memory’ in the History of Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy”, Renaissance Studies, 38, 3, 394-415

2021              “Ex variis metri generibus: Two ‘Metrical’ Neo-Latin Translators of Greek Tragedy across the English Channel”, Skenè, 7, 2, 81-116

2020              “The Interplay Between Aeschylus and Seneca in James Thomson’s Agamemnon”, IJCT, 27, 1, 40-61.

Chapters in volumes

forthcoming       “Post-Reformation and Counter-Reformation Abrahams: Dramaturgy and Doctrine in French, English and Italian Plays on the Sacrifice of Isaac”, in Politics of Worship Pre- and Post-Reformation, edited by Camilla Caporicci and Fabio Ciambella (Brill)

forthcoming       “The Reception of John Barclay’s Argenis in early seventeenth-century England” in Barockroman Bund Normativität / Romanzo barocco e normativit, edited by Florian Mehltretter, De Gruyter.

forthcoming       “‘Have one’s faith and adorn it too’: Literal Faithfulness and Rhetoric in English Renaissance Translation Theory of Religious Works” in Translation in Early Modern Europe: Domains, Networks, Theories, edited by Alessandra Petrina (Droz)

forthcoming       “‘Quotidiano sermoni proximus’: Metre and Prose in Mid-sixteenth-century English comedy (1530s-1580s)” in Metre and  Rhythm in Medieval and Early Modern English Poetry, edited by Alessandra Petrina and Omar Khalaf (Liverpool University Press)

forthcoming        “Biblical Women in Euripidean Buskins: Dramatizing the Story of Jephthah During the Reformation”, in Classical Reformations, edited by Micha Lazarus and Lucy Nicholas (Palgrave).

2023                     “Imitation, Collaboration, and Competition Between Translators of Greek Tragedy: Lumley, Watson, and their Continental predecessors” in Translating Greek Drama in the Early Modern Period: Theory and Practice (15th-16th Centuries), edited by Malika Bastin-Hammou, Giovanna Di Martino, Cécile Dudouyt, e Lucy Jackson, De Gruyter, 91-114.

2020                     “Plutarch in Sixteenth-century France and England: An Insight into the Life of Coriolanus as Translated by Amyot and North”, in Acquisition Through Translation, edited by Alessandra Petrina e Federica Masiero, “The Medieval Translator” series, Brepols, 93-114.

2020                    “Ben Jonson’s and Thomas May’s ‘Political Ladies’: Forms of Female Political Agency”, in Roman Women in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, edited by Domenico Lovascio, MIP, 141-163.

2019                     “A Matter of Speculation: Cleopatra’s ‘Infinite Variety’ in Her Performance of Suicide”, in The Fine Art of Lying in Early Modern English Drama, edited by Angelica Vedelago and Kent Cartwright, Firenze: The British Institute of Florence, 41-57.

Co-edited volumes/journal issues

forthcoming       “The Classics and the Bible in Early Modern European Tragedy”, Modern Philology, Special issue.

2019                    The Fine Art of Lying in Early Modern English Drama, edited by Angelica Vedelago and Kent Cartwright, Florence: The British Institute of Florence.

Digital editions

2024                  diplomatic, semi-diplomatic, and modernized editions, Greek and Latin Drama on the Early Modern English Stage, Skenè

1. George Buchanan, Medea (1544) with Carla Suthren
2. George Buchanan, Alcestis (1556) with Carla Suthren
3. Jane Lumley, Iphigeneia (1557?)
4. Anonymous, Trojan Women (1575)
5. Thomas Watson, Sophoclis Antigone (1581)
6. Thomas Evans, Oedipus Three Cantoes (1615)
7. Theodore Goulston, De poetica (1623)

Reviews

2022                  “Calvert Virgil’s English Translators. Civil Wars to Restoration. Pp. viii + 200. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021”, The Classical Review.

2021                  “Lisa Hopkins, 2020, Greek and Trojans on the Early Modern English Stage, Medieval Institute Publications”, The Sixteenth Century Journal.

Awards and Scholarships

16/02/2026                                    MSCA Seal of Excellence by the European Commission; project proposal n° 101281409: 2WayTragic “Greek Tragedy and Christianity in the British Isles (1500-1660)”

27/10/2022                                    Research Grant (Italian Association of Shakespearean and Early Modern Studies); project: “The first modern-spelling and modernized edition of Thomas May’s The Tragedy of Antigone”

01/10/2022 – 30/09/2024        Humboldt Research Fellowship, Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation; University of Hamburg and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU)

01/07/2020 – 30/06/2021         Postdoctoral fellowship funded by the Ministry of University at University of Verona

01/10/2016 – 30/09/2019          CARIPARO scholarship during the PhD

15/09/2017 – 07/02/2018          Erasmus + Scholarship, Wadham College, Università di Oxford (UK)

06/2019; 06/2018; 06/2017       IASEMS Junior Scholar Grants

01/10/2014 – 31/05/2015           DAAD Scholarship, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU)

18/09/2011 – 20/01/2012           Erasmus Scholarship, Università di St Andrews (UK)

11/05/2010                                      Third award at the “Certamen Senecanum”, Bassano del Grappa (VI)

Organisation of international conferences

13-15/06/2024    organiser of the international conference The Classics and the Bible in Early Modern European Tragedy (LMU)

11-12/01/2018    co-organiser of Orality and Writing: The Two Faces of Words (University of Padua)

Conference presentations, seminars, and lectures

Papers presented at international conferences

12/02/2025         Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität – invited by the organiser; “The Reception of John Barclay’s Argenis in early seventeenth-century England” at the conference  Barockroman und Normativität / Romanzo barocco e normatività 

14/06/2024         Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (conference I organised); “Intersection between Greek Tragedy and Christianity in Early Modern Italian and English Drama: Questions of Genre” al convegno The Classics and the Bible in Early Modern European Tragedy 

09/03/2024         Princeton University: “Jesuit drama in Sicily: The interplay of classical and biblical sources in Tuccio’s and Scammacca’s tragedies” at the conference Early Modern Translation and the Classics

23/06/2023         University of Montpellier – invited by the organisers; “Jesuit drama in Sicily: The interplay of classical and biblical sources in Stefano Tuccio’s and Ortensio Scammacca’s tragedies” al convegno Servir et éduquer: un apostolat jésuite en Europe moderne (XVIe – XVIIIe siècles) 

21/04/2023         British Institute of Florence: “Christianizing Greek Myths in Early Modern English Tragedy” at the conference The 14th IASEMS Graduate Conference

24/02/2023         University College London: “Haunting Memories and Memorable Performances in Pelopidarum Secunda” at the conference Memory and Performance: Classical Reception in Early Modern Festivals

06/09/2022         University of Catania: “Jephthah in Euripidean Buskins: How Two Humanists from the British Isles Used Greek Tragedy to Dramatize the Bible” at The 30th AIA Annual Conference

06/09/2022         University of Padua: “Have one’s faith and adorn it too”: Faithfulness and Rhetoric in English Renaissance Translation Theory of Religious Works” at the conference Translation in Early Modern Europe: Domains, Networks, Theories

24/06/2022         University College London: “Translating’ Sophocles in the Restoration: The ‘Athenian Harp’ resounding in Dryden and Lee’s Oedipus (1679)” at the conference Translating Ancient Greek Drama

17/06/2022          University of Insubria: “Anti-Imperium” Antigones: Political Resistance in the Early Modern English Receptions of Sophocles’ Antigone” at the conference Contra Imperium: Forms of dissent in England 1300-1700

20/05/2022         University of Padua: “The Metre (and the Prose) of mid-sixteenth-century English comedy (1530s-1580s): Theory and Practice” at the conference Metre and Rhythm in Medieval and Early Modern English Poetry

02/09/2021         Warburg Institute (online): “Jephthah in Euripidean Buskins: How Two Humanists from the British Isles Used Greek Tragedy to Dramatize the Bible” at the conference Classical Reformations: Beyond Christian Humanism

11/12/2020          Sorbonne Paris Nord, Université Grenoble Alpes, e Centro “APGRD” dell’Università di Oxford (online): “The Strange Case of Sophocles and Mr May: Functionalized Reception in Thomas May’s The Tragedy of Antigone (1632)” at the conference Translating Ancient Greek Drama in Europe 1600-1750

19/10/2020         Masaryk University (online): “The ‘Harp’ and the ‘Muse’: Sophocles and Seneca resounding in Dryden and Lee’s Oedipus (1679)” at the conference English Theatre Culture 1660-1737: Adaptations, Appropriations and Afterlives on Restoration                                         Stages

11/06/2020         University of St Andrews (online): “Pop Academia: The Crosscontamination Between Popular and Academic Drama in Thomas Watson’s Sophoclis Antigone” at the conference Renaissance Academic Drama and the Popular Stage

29/11/2019         University of Oxford: “Translating Greek Tragedy in Sixteenth-century Europe: Between Imitation and Competition” at the conference Translating Greek Drama in Early Modern Europe

22/11/2019         University of Turin: “Networks and Clusters: A Synchronic System to Account for the Diachronic Relationships Between Texts” at the conference Forms, History, Narrations, Big Data

14/12/2018         University of Oxford: “Thomas Watson’s Antigone: The Didacticism of Neo-Latin Academic Drama” at the conference Translating Greek Tragedy in 16-Century Europe

03/09/2018        King’s College London: “Didacticism in Neo-Latin Academic Drama: Mind-reading and ‘Mind-leading’ in Thomas Watson’s Antigone” at the conference Ancient Greek Drama in Latin 1506-1590

13/06/2018         University of Cagliari: “‘Mind-reading’ the Self in Neo-Latin Academic Drama: Thomas Watson’s Antigone” at The Ninth IASEMS Annual Conference

01/06/2017         The Shakespeare Institute: “Cleopatra the Liar, Cleopatra the Director in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra” at The Nineteenth Annual British Graduate Shakespeare Conference

03/05/2017         University of Padua: “Thomas North’s Plutarch: Translating a Translation in the Elizabethan Period” at the conference Acquisition through Translation: The Rise of the Vernacular in Early Modern Europe

07/04/2017         The British Institute of Florence: “Lying in the Play and with the Play: Cleopatra as a Liar and as a Director in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra” at The IASEMS Graduate Conference

13/12/2016          University of Oxford: “The Effects of Displacement on the Language of James Thomson’s Agamemnon” at The Sixth Annual Meeting of Postgraduates in the Reception of the Ancient World

Seminars, Invited Lectures, Workshops:

10/05/2024        invited presentation of the project “Intersezioni tra tragedia greca e cristianesimo nel teatro italiano ed inglese (1550-1660)” within the workshop for the 2022 PRIN “Politics of Worship pre- and post-Reformation”, University of Padua

11/01/2023         invited lecture: “Richardson’s Pamela (1740)” nell’ambito di un corso sul teatro di Carlo Goldoni, University of Hamburg

04/09/2019        presentation of the PhD thesis: “The Reception of Sophocles’ Antigone in Early Modern English Drama” at The AIA Pre-Conference Symposium for Early Career Researchers, University of Padua

23/05/2019         “The Reception of Sophocles’ Antigone in Early Modern English Drama” at The Young Scholars’ Workshop of the Tenth IASEMS Conference, University of Genoa

19/10/2018         invited lecture: “Shakespeare and Reception Studies” within the BA course in Modern Languages and Literatures, University of Padua

10/10/2018         invited lecture: “English Antigones: Translating and Adapting Sophocles in the Early Modern Period” within the Seminar of English and American Studies, University of Padua

23/11/2017          “Translating Sophocles in the Early Modern Period: Thomas Watson’s Antigone” within Professor Fiona Macintosh’s seminar “Theories and Methods of Reception”, University of Oxford

22/11/2014          “Analyse von Hölderlins Übersetzung von Sophokles’ Antigone” within the “Oberseminar” of Professor Friedrich Vollhardt, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität