Formichi, Carlo

Short biography

Carlo Formichi was an Italian philologist, specialised in Oriental studies.
Formichi was born in Naples in 1871. He obtained a Degree in Law at the University of Naples in 1891, and one in Arts in 1893. Between 1894 and 1895 he was a teacher at the ginnasio (lower secondary school) in Reggio Calabria.
Before starting his university career, Formichi had developed a keen interest in the Sanskritic language, and as a student he continued to study it under the supervision of Michele Kerbaker. Thanks to a scholarship, he attended courses in Philosophy and Oriental studies at the University of Kiel between 1896 and 1897.
Back in Italy, he began teaching Sanskritic philology at the University of Bologna. In 1898 he moved to Pisa, where he taught Sanskritic at the University for fourteen years. In 1913 he began teaching English at the Scuola Normale Superiore, and in the same year he became professor of Sanskritic at the University of Rome.
During his career as a university professor, Formichi held several lectures and conferences in India and Egypt, and in 1929 he was appointed Professor of Italian culture at the University of California, Berkley.
In addition to his extensive research and teaching in the area of Oriental studies, Carlo Formichi wa also active in the area of English language and literature. He authored materials for teaching the language and he wrote several essays about Shakespeare’s works. He also translated Othello, Hamlet and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels into Italian.