Chiara Monaco

Cotsen Travel Fellow at the Gennadius Library

Chiara Monaco received her Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Cambridge (2021) with a thesis on Greek Purism. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the University for Foreigners in Siena and is now a Research Fellow of the Flanders Research Foundation (FWO) at Ghent University. Her research project entitled ‘The Aeolodoric Theory: A Paradigm for Ancient Greek Linguistic Approaches’ addresses the Greek language question by proposing a comparative study between ancient linguistic approaches and the way they are reused in the Aeolodoric theory, an influential nineteenth-century theory that promoted the use of vernacular Greek as a mixture of Doric and Aeolic ancient dialects. As a Cotsen Fellow, she will conduct her research at the Gennadius Library, focusing in particular on the study of the pamphlets, epistolary correspondences, and editions of ancient texts preserved in the Gennadius Collection of Modern Greek History, which are crucial sources for contextualizing the analysis of the Greek language question within the definition of national identity and European philhellenism, and for establishing the foundations of her comparative research.