This book represents an investigation into one of the basic issues in the study of translation: how do we reconcile theory and practice? The main focus, in the form of close readings and think-aloud protocols in Chapters 2 and 3, is on translations of two classic texts: Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Carlo Collodi's Le avventure di Pinocchio. The first and last chapters respectively seek to show what translation theory is and what translation practice is. Indeed, Chapter 1, "Theory and Hubris," provides a synthesis of the development of the interdiscipline of Translation Studies, with some consideration also given to the hermeneutical questions that inevitably arise when dealing with the interpretation of language.
Adaptations of canonical texts have played an important role throughout the history of children's literature and have been seen as an active and vital contributing force in establishing a common ground for intercultural communication across generations and borders. This collection analyses different examples of adapting canonical texts in or for children's literature encompassing adaptations of English classics for children and young adult readers and intercultural adaptations of children's classics across Europe. The international contributors assess both historical and transcultural adaptation in relation to historically and regionally contingent concepts of childhood. By assessing how texts move across age-specific or national borders, they examine the traces of a common literary and cultural heritage in European children's literature.
This book is divided into three sections. The first section deals with the general situation of Italian/American literature and its reception both in the United States and in Italy. It also discusses other social and cultural issues that pertain to Italian Americana. Section two consists of six chapters, each discussing a specific author; three dedicated to prose (Pietro di Donato, Mario Puzo, Luigi Barzini), three dedicated to poetry (Joseph Tusiani, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Rina Ferrarelli). Section three examines the current state of criticism dedicated to Italian/American literature, the second part focusing in on a number of specific works.
During World War II 51,000 Italian prisoners of war were detained in the United States. When Italy signed an armistice with the Allies in September 1943, most of these soldiers agreed to swear allegiance to the United States and to collaborate in the fight against Germany. At the Letterkenny Army Depot, located near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, more than 1,200 Italian soldiers were detained as co-operators. They arrived in May 1944 to form the 321st Italian Quartermaster Battalion and remained until October 1945. As detainees, the soldiers helped to order, stock, repair, and ship military goods, munitions and equipment to the Pacific and European Theaters of war. Through such labor, they lent their collective energy to the massive home front endeavor to defeat the Axis Powers. The prisoners also helped to construct the depot itself, building roads, sidewalks, and fences, along with individual buildings such as an assembly hall, amphitheater, swimming pool, and a chapel and bell tower. The latter of these two constructions still exist, and together with the assembly hall, bear eloquent testimony to the Italian POW experience. For their work the Italian co-operators received a very modest, regular salary, and they experienced more freedom than regular POWs. In their spare time, they often had liberty to leave the post in groups that American soldiers chaperoned. Additionally, they frequently received or visited large entourages of Italian Americans from the Mid-Atlantic region who were eager to comfort their erstwhile countrymen. The story of these Italian soldiers detained at Letterkenny has never before been told. Now, however, oral histories from surviving POWs, memoirs generously donated by family members of ex-prisoners, and the rich information newly available from archival material in Italy, aided by material found in the U.S., have made it possible to reconstruct this experience in full. All of this historical documentation has also allowed the authors to tell fascinating individual stories from the moment when many POWs were captured to their return to Italy and beyond. More than seventy years since the end of World War II, family members of ex-POWs in both the United States and Italy still enjoy the positive legacy of this encounter.
Following the more theoretical first installment of New Perspectives in Italian Cultural Studies devoted to Definitions, Theory, and Accented Practices, the second volume of New Perspectives deals with practicing cultural studies by offering articles that are valuable for both scholars of Italian studies and students interested in a cultural studies approach. Divided in four sections, the articles included offer complex approaches to literature, film, the visual arts, and a particular moment in Italian history with which Italians are still coming to terms, fascism. The essays cover about two hundred years of Italian cultures dealing with the construction of national myths, the role of soccer in contemporary debates, the contemporary success of mystery novels, and issues of race and crime in fascist Italy. Contributors look at film through the lens of fashion history and the particular Italian use of dubbing that continues even today. Place and memory are the topics of a number of essays that also allows for an interpretation of Italian culture inAmericans’ imagination. This volume contains a multifaceted representation of Italy and invites additional discussion on the complexity of representing cultures
The book focuses on literary representations of the northern Italian region of Liguria, whose landscape has been portrayed by internationally-known Italian poets and novelists, from Eugenio Montale to Italo Calvino. The author argues that the most perceptive authors situate themselves on a metaphorical ridge dividing the “dark side” of Mediterranean landscape, with its harsh and mountainous territory, from the sun-drenched Riviera, celebrated by the tourist industry and for the most part destroyed during the so-called economic boom. The complex and often antithetical concepts of landscape examined in the introduction inform the author’s readings of those modern and contemporary writers who have tried to make sense of the ambivalences present in Ligurian landscape, from the period of Italian Risorgimento to the present.
Following the more theoretical first installment of New Perspectives in Italian Cultural Studies devoted to Definitions, Theory, and Accented Practices, the second volume of New Perspectives deals with practicing cultural studies by offering articles that are valuable for both scholars of Italian studies and students interested in a cultural studies approach. Divided in four sections, the articles included offer complex approaches to literature, film, the visual arts, and a particular moment in Italian history with which Italians are still coming to terms, fascism. The essays cover about two hundred years of Italian cultures dealing with the construction of national myths, the role of soccer in contemporary debates, the contemporary success of mystery novels, and issues of race and crime in fascist Italy. Contributors look at film through the lens of fashion history and the particular Italian use of dubbing that continues even today. Place and memory are the topics of a number of essays that also allow for an interpretation of Italian culture inAmericans' imagination. This volume contains a multifaceted representation of Italy and invites additional discussion on the complexity of representing cultures
New Perspectives in Italian Cultural Studies. Volume 1: Definitions, Theory, and Accented Practices is a collection of essays that identifies a number of different approaches in cultural studies and in Italian cultural studies in particular. It highlights that history of cultural studies and new developments in the field as well focuses on practicing cultural studies with essays devoted to Italian hip hop culture, postcolonial Italy and queer diaspora, Occidentalism in Japan, Italian racism and colonialism.
By taking as its point of departure the privileged relationship between the crime novel and its setting, this book is the most wide-ranging examination of the way in which Italian detective fiction in the last 20 years has become a means to articulate the changes in the social landscape of the country. Nowadays there is a general acknowledgment of the importance of place in Italian crime novels. However, apart from a limited scholarship on single cities, the genre has never been systematically studied in a way that so comprehensively spans Italian national boundaries. The originality of this volume also lies in the fact that the author have not limited her investigation to a series of cities, but rather she has considered the different forms of (social) landscape in which Italian crime novels are set. Through the analysis of the way in which cities, the "urban sprawl," and islands are represented in the serial novels of 11 of the most important contemporary crime writers in Italy of the 1990s, Pezzotti articulates the different ways in which individual authors appropriate the structures and tropes of the genre to reflect the social transformations and dysfunctions of contemporary Italy. In so doing, this volume also makes a case for the genre as an instrument of social critique and analysis of a still elusive Italian national identity, thus bringing further evidence in support of the thesis that in Italy detective fiction has come to play the role of the new "social novel."
Place, Setting, Perspective examines the films of the Italian filmmaker, Nanni Moretti, from a fresh viewpoint, employing the increasingly significant research area of space within a filmic text. The book is conceived with the awareness that space cannot be studied only in aesthetic or narrative terms: social, political, and cultural aspects of narrated spaces are equally important if a thorough appraisal is to be achieved of an oeuvre such as Moretti’s, which is profoundly associated with socio-political commentary and analysis. After an exploration of various existing frameworks of narrative space in film, the book offers a particular definition of the term based on the notions of Place, Setting, and Perspective. Place relates to the physical aspect of narrative space and specifically involves cityscapes, landscapes, interiors, and exteriors in the real world. Setting concerns genre characteristics of narrative space, notably its differentiated use in melodrama, detective stories, fantasy narratives, and gender based scenarios. Perspective encompasses the point of view taken optically by the camera which supports the standpoint of Moretti’s personal philosophy expressed through the aesthetic aspects which he employs to create narrative space. The study is based on a close textual analysis of Moretti’s eleven major feature films to date, using the formal film language of mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound. The aim is to show how Moretti selects, organizes, constructs, assembles, and manipulates the many elements of narrative space into an entire work of art, to enable meanings and pleasures for the spectator.
