Charles Burdett

Marco Santello

Loredana Polezzi

Transnational Italian Studies is specifically targeted at a student audience and is designed to be used as a key text when approaching the disciplinary field of Italian studies. It allows the study of Italian culture to be construed and practised not simply as the inquiry into a national tradition but as the study of the interaction of cultural practices both within Italy itself and in those parts of the world that have witnessed the extent of Italian mobility. The text argues that Italian culture needs to be considered in a transnational/transcultural perspective and that an understanding of linguistic and cultural translation underlies all approaches to the study of Italian culture in a global context. Contributions deploy a range of methodological approaches to understand and illustrate how language operates, how culture inhabits and constitutes public and private space, how notions of time operate within people's lives, and the multiple ways in which people experience a sense of personhood. Chapters stretch from the early modern period to the present and demonstrate how transnational Italian culture can be critically addressed through the examination of carefully chosen examples.

Transnational Italian Studies

Charlotte Ross

Collects essays devoted to the critical exploration of the presence and impact of bodies in contemporary Italian cultural production, and in the light of developments in thinking about bodies and their locations within cultures. This book includes essays that assume a plurality of conceptions of culture and of the body.

Bodies in Post-unification Italy

In Corpore

Transnational Italian Studies is specifically targeted at a student audience and is designed to be used as a key text when approaching the disciplinary field of Italian studies. It allows the study of Italian culture to be construed and practised not simply as the inquiry into a national tradition but as the study of the interaction of cultural practices both within Italy itself and in those parts of the world that have witnessed the extent of Italian mobility. The text argues that Italian culture needs to be considered in a transnational/transcultural perspective and that an understanding of linguistic and cultural translation underlies all approaches to the study of Italian culture in a global context. Contributions deploy a range of methodological approaches to understand and illustrate how language operates, how culture inhabits and constitutes public and private space, how notions of time operate within people’s lives, and the multiple ways in which people experience a sense of personhood. Chapters stretch from the medieval period to the present and demonstrate how transnational Italian culture can be critically addressed through the examination of carefully chosen examples. Contributors: Alessandra Diazzi, Andrea Rizzi, Barbara Spadaro, Charles Burdett, Clorinda Donato, David Bowe, Derek Duncan, Donna Gabaccia, Eugenia Paulicelli, Fabio Camilletti, Giuliana Muscio, Jennifer Burns, Loredana Polezzi, Marco Santello, Monica Jansen, Naomi Wells, Nathalie Hester, Serena Bassi, Stefania Tufi, Teresa Fiore and Tristan Kay.

The connection between travel and translation is often evoked in contemporary critical theory, both practices seen as metaphors of mobility and flux linked to globalized 'post-modern' society. Travel is a multiple activity, encompassing temporary and voluntary displacement, repeated movement, exile, economic migration, diaspora. Places of origin are often plural and unstable, in spite of the enduring appeal of traditional labels such as 'mother country' or 'patrie'. The multiple interfaces between translation, travel and migration are the focus of all contributions in this special issue. Starting from different points of view, and using a variety of methodologies, the authors raise fundamental questions about the way in which we perceive the link between language, national or ethnic identity, and individual voice. Topics range from the interaction between travel, travel narratives and translation in early English representations of China, to the special role played by interpreters in mediating the first contact between a literate and a non-literate culture; from the multiple functions and audiences addressed by contemporary Romani literature and its translation, to the political as well a cultural implications of translating popular music across the Bosporus. A number of the articles focus on detailed textual analysis, covering the intersection between exile, self-translation and translingualism in the work of Manuel Puig; the uses and limitations of translation in the works of migrant authors; or the impact on figurations of Europe of experimental work embracing polylingualism. Collectively, these contributions also underline the importance of a closer examination of our assumptions about who the translators and the interpreters are, and what roles they play in our society.

v. 12/2: Special Issue of the Translator

Translation, Travel, Migration

Barbara Spadaro

The history of Italian culture stems from multiple experiences of mobility and migration, which have produced a range of narratives, inside and outside Italy. This collection interrogates the dynamic nature of Italian identity and culture, focussing on the concepts and practices of mobility, memory and translation. It adopts a transnational perspective, offering a fresh approach to the study of Italy and of Modern Languages.

Mobility, Memory and Translation

Transcultural Italies

Jennifer Burns

migrazioni e identità nel Novecento

Borderlines

Translating Travel examines the relationship between travel writing and translation, asking what happens when books travel beyond the narrow confines of one genre, one literary system and one culture. The volume takes as its starting point the marginal position of contemporary Italian travel writing in the Italian literary system, and proposes a comparative reading of originals and translations designed to highlight the varying reception of texts in different cultures. Two main themes in the book are the affinity between the representations produced by travel and the practices of translation, and the complex links between travel writing and genres such as ethnography, journalism, autobiography and fiction. Individual chapters are devoted to Italian travellers' accounts of Tibet and their English translations; the hybridization of journalism and travel writing in the works of Oriana Fallaci; Italo Calvino's sublimation of travel writing in the stylized fiction of Le città invisibili; and the complex network of literary references which marked the reception of Claudio Magris's Danubio in different cultures.

Loredana Polezzi

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