Maria Albano, Gonville and Caius

Degree: PhD
Course: English
Supervisor: Prof Michael Hurley
Dissertation Title: Rhyme and Narrative in the Long Nineteenth Century

Biographical Information

I grew up in Milan, Italy, and moved to the UK to read for a BA in Comparative Literature at Queen Mary, University of London and a Mst in English literature (1830-1914) at Regent's Park College, University of Oxford. During a break from academia, I worked as a freelance journalist writing opinion pieces and literary essays for various publications, including LitHub, The Independent and The Spectator.

Operating at the intersection of narrative theory and poetics, my PhD research explores how rhyme shapes story in narrative poems of the long nineteenth century. Informed by contemporaneous debates on rhyme, narrative, and the historiography of stanza forms, my investigation into the status of rhyme in narrative unfolds through close readings of verse by authors such as Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti and Swinburne.

Research Interests

Pope; Milton; Keats; Wordsworth; Browning; Tennyson; C. Rossetti; EBB; historicist poetics; style, rhythm and sound; pre-Raphaelitism in literature and the arts; Romantic and post-romantic poetry; melodrama in fiction; classical reception; philosophy, theology and literature; narrative theory; comparative literature.