This panel brings together translators with scholars of translation/adaptation studies to address the multi-lingual and multi-faceted reception of Dante’s works across the world. The first panelist discusses his groundbreaking research, the first monograph to survey and analyze translations of the Comedy from across the world. The second panelist discusses his own collaboration on an award-winning critical edition and Spanish translation of the poem. The third panelist brings together both strands of this panel – discussing an important adaptation of the Comedy, as well as the speaker’s own process of translating the adaptation. The fourth panelist broadens the scope of the panel by investigating the reception of Dante’s work during the ‘years of lead’, a period of terrorist attacks that wracked Italy for more than a decade in post-war Italy. Given the moment of crisis that the world is currently dealing with today, on the 700thanniversary of Dante’s death, the question of how we adapt and respond to Dante’s works during times of crisis is particularly poignant and relevant.
Blakesley’s talk discusses his monograph-in-progress: the first to survey and analyze translations of the Commedia across the world, from the first published translation in 1515 to today. Given the staggering amount of secondary literature on Dante’s magnum opus, and the work’s enormous popularity across a range of linguistic traditions, this work is long overdue. The talk highlights three novel aspects of the book’s approach. First, it shows which linguistic traditions have translated the Commedia the most, and which the least – and posits reasons for this discrepancy. Second, he highlights differences in gender among Dante translators: in many languages, all translators are male; in other languages, there are popular translations by female translators. Third, he addresses the circulation of the Commedia in national, university and public libraries across the globe, from New York to Nairobi, Mexico to Mongolia, Stockholm to Singapore.
Ballesteros, the main commentator and scholarly editor of a new critical edition of Dante’s Commedia in Spanish, discusses his work on the project which began at Los Andes University over two decades ago. “Infierno”, the first of the three planned volumes of their new edition was published in 2019 to critical acclaim, and in 2020 it received a LAD award. Ballesteros describes how in the process of making this book, the reading of Dante shaped, not only the careers, but also the minds of the scholars who worked on it.
Yocum’s talk explores one of the most unique (and lesser-known) modern prose adaptations of Dante’s Commedia, Éschaton - Traguardo di un’anima (1999) by Luigi Santucci (1918-1999), one of the most important Italian writers of his generation. After accompanying his readers through the crossing of the barriers of death in Orfeo in Paradiso (Campiello prize winner, 1967), Santucci in his final work leads us through an intrapsychic journey through the text’s three sections of Dantean memory. Santucci’s Virgil is the “terrible and inseparable” Fùnditus, the writer’s unconscious, who plunges the protagonist into Hell, only to open the door to Purgatory where a cathartic “purging” of the writer’s life takes place. In an illuminating representation of Paradise, Santucci’s truth is revealed: happiness, or joy, is hidden within the “beat of our every hour.” Through this inner “divine comedy,” and down-to-earth metaphysics, Santucci traces the path of the soul toward the absolute otherness of God. The paper investigates themes in Santucci’s adaptation that more vividly bring into play Dante’s own journey through the afterlife. And, as Santucci’s work is currently being translated into English by Yocum, it also brings into focus particular linguistic, stylistic, and interpretive challenges involved in translating a modern prose adaptation with the original source in mind.
Genovese discusses how Dante’s authority was used to reflect on contemporary political events during the ‘anni di piombo’. On August 2nd, 1980 a bomb destroyed the central train station in Bologna, causing 85 deaths and injuring over 200. The massacre constituted the culmination of over 10 years of terrorist attacks by extremist groups. One year after the event, Carmelo Bene, renowned actor and film director, was asked to commemorate those who lost their lives by performing a lectura dantis on the Asinelli tower in Bologna. The recording of the event, long lost, was recently re-discovered. By analyzing the lectura and its contemporary reception by newspapers and intellectuals, Genovese sheds light on how Dante was both embraced and rejected during one of the most problematic periods of post-war Italy.
Talks will be 13 minutes. We chose 4 panelists due to a large number of submissions.