Opening Remarks to the Reader

is Professor Emerita of the Italian Department of the University of Szeged, Head of the Research Centre for Antiquities and Renaissance: Sources and Reception and the Animalia Research Centre, Vice President of the Centro Internazionale di Studi Giovan Battista Della Porta (Naples). His research interests include medieval and modern cultural history, Italian literary history of the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque, court culture, the role of physiognomy in literature and in the arts, and the cultural history of animal symbolism. The latter is the subject of his edited volume Állatszimbólumtár (2019) and his book of studies Állatszimbolika a közép- és újkori Itália irodalmában (2018).