Born in Southampton (GB), in 1970 she obtained a BA First Class Honours degree in French and Spanish at Westfield College, University of London, and in 1976 a degree in French: Laurea magna cum laude, at the Istituto Universitario Orientale, Naples, with a dissertation in Romance Philology entitled I fabliaux e le convenzioni della parodia, which was published in part the same year. From 1983-84 she has taught Romance Philology at several Italian universities (University of Basilicata, Potenza, University of Cassino and, from 1994 to the present, the University of Salerno).
Her main field of interest has always been the Romance narrative tradition: the medieval Romance tale (the Old French fabliaux and lais, the Italian novella, tales in Spain) and, more recently the Old Occitan epic and romance. She has also researched into Old French lyric poetry, the fortune of Sallust in the Middle Ages, especially the earliest Spanish translation of this historian, into autobiography in the Middles Ages and the misogynist tradition.
Among her principal publications are the critical editions of the fabliau Auberee, the Old Occitan epic poem Daurel e Beton and the romance of Jaufre. At the present time she is also researching into the use of French in Naples and southern Italy during the Angevin period, on which she is preparing a series of publications, as well as into the lyric poems by Richard the Lionheart.