Research: The Aesthetic Novel: theorising the intersection of British aestheticism and the novel form in the long fin de siècle
Michele Brugnetti is a doctoral student enrolled in the PhD program in English Literature, Language, and Translation Studies at Sapienza University of Rome (specialising in Literary and Cultural Studies), in joint collaboration with the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. In 2023, he obtained a master's degree in English and Anglo-American Studies from Sapienza University of Rome, with a thesis in English literature titled "Aesthetic Novel: Multiplicity of Form, Imaginative Memory, and the Melancholy of the Moment in Walter Pater's Marius the Epicurean." Prior to that, he completed a bachelor's degree in Lingue, Culture, Letterature, Traduzione at the same university in 2021. His doctoral project focuses on the intersection between the British novel and British Aestheticism, particularly in the works of Walter Pater, Arthur Machen, Ouida, Thomas Hardy, and Oscar Wilde. His research interests, in addition to the English novel and aestheticism, include the critical approaches of New Aestheticism and Cognitive Literary Studies. He is a member of the Italian Oscar Wilde Society.