Professor Giuseppe Pezzini

My main area of research is Latin Language and Literature, with a special focus on Early Latin (3rd – 1st c. BC). I am currently finalising an edition of and commentary on Terence's Heautontimorumenos, forthcoming in the Cambridge ‘Orange Series’, and also working on a commentary of Lucretius DRN 4 (with Fondazione Lorenzo Valla).

I was trained as a linguist and philologist, and have a special interest in ancient metre, textual criticism, and digital humanities. I have published widely in these areas but always tried to put my technical expertise at the service of broader issues, and investigate the mutual relation between the detail and the general picture (minima cura si maxima uis).

My interests also extend well beyond the ancient world, and have converged into works on modern English literature and its classical ancestry. These include a monograph on Tolkien’s theory of imagination (CUP 2025), stemming from my collaborations with the Oxford Tolkien Network, the Journal of Inklings Studies, and the ITIA Institute at the University of St Andrews.

Early Latin, Roman Theatre, Latin Linguistics, Textual Criticism, Ancient Metre, Philosophy of Language, Fiction Theory.

All undergraduate options in Latin Literature, especially Latin Core and Comedy, and including Latin language. Latin Metre for the MSt. I have supervised graduate dissertations on a range of topics, including Roman Republican identity and late antique theory of fiction.

Full Publications: Professor G Pezzini Full list of Publications January 2025

Selected Publications:

(2025, in press) with S. Rebeggiani and T. Nelson (eds.), Pergamon and Rome: Culture, Identity, and Influence (Oxford: OUP)

(2025, in press) Tolkien and the Mystery of Literary Creation (Cambridge: CUP).

(2025), ‘Notes on the text of Terence's Heautontimorumenos', Giornale Italiano di filologia 76, 69–91.

(2024), ‘The Classical Style of Terence’, in P. Dainotti, S. Harrison, and A.P. Hasegawa (eds.), Style in Latin Poetry. Trends in Classics (Berlin: De Gruyter), 37–53.

(2024), ‘Il testo di Terenzio e il risciacquo del Latino ‘classico’’, in P. Fedeli and Antonio Stramaglia (eds.), Un ‘Autore sostanzialmente inedito’: per una nuova edizione di Terenzio e dei commentator tardo antichi (Rome), Bollettino dei Classici 45: 253–273.

(2023) with J. Adams and A. Chahoud (eds.), Early Latin: Constructs, Diversity, Reception (Cambridge: CUP)

Pezzini, G. (2022), ‘‘Classical’ Narratives of Decline in Tolkien: Renewal, Accommodation, Focalization’, in M. Paprocki and A. Matz (eds.), There and Back Again: Tolkien and the Graeco-Roman World, Thersites 15: 25–51.

Pezzini, G. (2021) ‘Terence and the speculum uitae: Realism and (Roman) Comedy’ Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 111: 101–161.

Pezzini, G. (2021), ‘Tamen apsentes prosunt pro praesentibus: ‘Proxied’ Absences and Roman Comedy’ in T. Geue and E. Giusti (eds.), Unspoken Rome: Absence in Latin Literature and its Reception (Cambridge: CUP): 67–88.

Pezzini, G. (2021), ‘The Gods in (Tolkien’s) Epic’, in Williams, H. (ed.) Tolkien and the Classical World (Zurich and Jena: Walking Tree Publishers): 73–103. 

Pezzini, G. (2019) Language and Nature in the Classical Roman World (edited with Barnaby Taylor) (Cambridge: CUP)

Pezzini, G. (2016) ‘Comic Lexicon: Searching for Submerged Latin from Plautus to Erasmus’ in J. N. Adams and N. Vincent, N., (eds.), Continuities between Early and Late Latin (Cambridge: CUP): 14–46.

Pezzini, G. (2015) Terence and the Verb ‘To be’ in Latin (Oxford: OUP 2015)