Dear list members,

This is a reminder that the deadline for submitting papers to the following Study Day has been extended:

Echoing Voices: Translation Poetry in 20^th –Century Italy

18^th June 2014

Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford

Extended Deadline: 10 May

Description:

    Over the 20^th century translation acquired a special role in defining modern aesthetics and in helping poets to shape their own voice. Poets have been led towards translation by the most various motivations: need of literary and linguistic apprenticeship, ideology, desire to understand similar and/or opposite poetic experiences, critical interests, publishing opportunities etc. At the same time, they were attracted by the possibility of sharing poetic legacies and establishing dialogues with other poets. Whether claimed to be a personal challenge or perceived as a cultural and national achievement, contemporary translation deserves to be addressed and studied in relation to poetics.

    While the affinity between translation and the writing of original verse has been fully recognised in individual figures (Montale, Ungaretti, Fortini and Sereni, to mention but a few), it has become necessary to make a general assessment of the impact that translation had on cultural ideas and identity in the course of the 20^th century.

   Bringing together scholars who have interrogated the overlapping between poetry and translation in modern Italian poetry, the Symposium proposes to discuss such crucial issues as: the canonization of “translation poetry” as a self-standing genre, the identification of recurrent themes, metaphors and tropes surfacing the translator-poets’ self-representation, literary models and influences, reception of foreign authors and hierarchies in the penetration of foreign languages.

    Papers can be in English or Italian and will investigate the centrality of translation practice in 20^th-century Italian poetry and poetic discourse. Themes may include:

·         Stylistic analysis of poetic translations;

·         Translation as a means to reinforce poetic discourse;

·         The choice of translation modes and genres: notebooks, anthologies, fragmentary translations;

·         Translation in relation to tradition (imitating, questioning, consolidating the canon, or challenging other translators);

·         Translation as “secondo mestiere” in relation to other editorial activities;

·         Translation as a collaborative task: co-translations and collaborations with proofreaders and publishers;

·         Being translated and self-translations;

·         Translation criticism;

Please send an abstract of about 300 words, name, academic affiliation and a short bio to Teresa Franco at [log in to unmask]

Best regards,

Dr. Teresa Franco

Somerville College

University of Oxford