Translating Travel: Contemporary Italian Travel Writing in English Translation: 12 (Studies in European Cultural Transition) - Hardcover

Polezzi, Loredana

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0754602737 ISBN 13: 9780754602736

Publisher: Routledge, 2001

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review

'The book is excellently documented, coherently marshalling a wide range of sources, and it offers perceptive comments on many points of detail. Balanced between several fields of interest, it can at times be tantalizing... an important contribution to an inherently complex field of enquiry.' Italian Studies '... highly recommended for its theoretical intelligence and acumen, and in particular for its innovative development of the Deleuzean concept of 'minor literature' in an Italian context. Moreover, the book proposes an original and extremely fertile methodological approach to Italian travel literature that might well be extended to the Italian tradition at large, going back to Marco Polo and early modern Italian travel literature, thus providing a powerful and timely antidote, particularly in an age of 'globalizing literary studies', to the Italian critical tradition's aversion to travel.' Modern Language Review '[Loredana Polezzi's] work is a fine example of a perfect bilingual sensibility at work on a suitably bicultural subject, in the older 'golden' tradition of Comparative Literature... Few books in translation studies can match this kind of fully bilingual resourcefulness...' The Translator

About the Author

Loredana Polezzi is Lecturer in Italian Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. Her main research interests include travel writing, translation studies and comparative literature. She has written on British travellers in Italy, contemporary Italian travel writing and the influence of translation on the formation of images of Italy.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0754602737
• ISBN 13: 9780754602736
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256