The Academy of Athens, at its Plenary Session of November 23rd, 2023, elected the Modern Greek scholar Ms. Paola Maria Minucci as a corresponding member of the B’ Class of Letters and Fine Arts, in the field of Modern Greek Language and Literature.

Paola Maria Minucci was born in 1948 in Grosseto, Tuscany. She studied Italian literature at the University of Florence and Modern Greek literature at the University of Rome La Sapienza. She attended courses at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki under the supervision of Professors Georgios Savvidis, Panagiotis Moullas and Dimitris Maronitis. Since 1981, she has been Professor of Modern Greek Language and Literature at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Rome (Sapienza Università di Roma), from which she retired in 2018.

She wrote monographs, critical articles and essays on modern Greek literature, comparing modern Greek poetry of the 20th century with Italian poetry. She was particularly involved in the translation into Italian of modern Greek literary works, especially poetry collections of the most important Greek poets of the 20th century (such as Konstantinos Cavafy, Odysseus Elytis, Kiki Dimoula, Titos Patrikios, Manolis Anagnostakis, Michalis Ganas, Michalis Pieris, Ioulita Iliopoulou), as well as prose writers (such as Vassilis Vasilikos, Thanasis Valtinos, Kostas Tahtsis), often presenting for the first time the work of Greek writers to an Italian audience. She also translated dialogues of Theodoros Angelopoulos’ film works, as well as song lyrics by Dionysis Savvopoulos. In addition, she translated into Greek the works of Giuseppe Ungaretti. She founded the series of the Chair of Modern Greek Language and Literature ‘Saggi di Greco Moderno – Filologia, Letteratura, Traduzione’, Bulzoni Publications. This series published works by Kalvos and Solomos, as well as works by Th. Ωαλτινοσ, M. Pieris and M. Vitti.

Through her teaching, her important translation work and her many years of continuous activity as a cultural liaison between the two countries, she has contributed and continues to contribute decisively to the promotion of Modern Greek culture in Italy.

Her work has received considerable recognition. In 2006 she was awarded the State Prize for Translation of Greek Literature into a Foreign Language by the Ministry of Culture of Greece for her book: Odysseas Elytis, La materia leggera. Pittura e purezza nell’ arte contemporanea, Donzelli Editore, Roma 2005. In 2007 she was awarded the State Prize of the Italian Ministry of Culture for all her work. In 2013 she was awarded the medal of Brigadier General of the Order of the Phoenix of the Hellenic Republic. In 2018, an international conference was dedicated in her honour on “Modern Greek literature of the 20th century. A European affair”. Finally, in 2023, by presidential decree, she was awarded Greek citizenship.