He has a Laurea Magistrale in foreign languages and literatures (English and German) from the University of Florence, a graduate Diploma in American Studies from Smith College, and a PhD in Italian from Rutgers University. Forlino’s areas of specialization include Italian literature from the Medieval through the Baroque periods (with a particular focus on Boccaccio and Basile), the history of the Italian short story, and the birth of the fairy tale. He is currently working on a manuscript on the influence of the Arabic prose tradition on Italian literature, focusing on a series of motifs – such as esotericism, eroticism, and exoticism – shared between Boccaccio’s Decameron and Basile’s Pentamerone, and the heritage of A Thousand and One Nights.