scholarly journals THE EARLIEST ITALIAN TRANSLATIONS OF JOHN MILTON ’S “PARADISE LOST”: FAILED ATTEMPTS AND DANTESQUE INFLUEN CES

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 76
Author(s):  
Moreno Bonda

This paper deals with the history of translation in the 18th and 19th centuries. It investigates the reasons behind six unsuccessful attempts to translate John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) into the Italian language. We hypothesise that the problem was the rendering of unusually marked lexical, thematic, stylistic and rhythmical analogies with Dante’s Comedy and, mainly, with its sources. Adopting Antonio Bellati’s Italian translation (1856) as an indicator, our study focuses on problematic aspects intrinsic to the English poem. Specifically, we suggest that the challenge was the transposition of Paradise Lost’s peculiar mixture of style and meter: the blank verse of a Christian epic poem. This uniqueness rendered it too similar to Dante’s Comedy. Likewise, the setting and the subject matter of the English poem were too adherent to that of both Dante and Virgil’s Aeneid (one of Dante’s main sources). Finally, it might have been difficult to translate Milton into Italian because the English poet openly imitates the Italian epic style, its rhythmical and lexical choices. We conclude that it might have been arduous to avoid even more marked Dantesque influences in an Italian translation. In other words, this study depicts an unusual traductive instance of “excess of equivalence” for lexical and culturally specific items.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bogusław Dopart

The title of the present monograph refers to one of the most fundamental traits of the oeuvre and literary life of Adam Mickiewicz. While constantly occupied with invigorating and broadening the subject- -matter of his works, Mickiewicz is careful to follow a steady track of ideas, concepts, and truths. In constructing successive models of poetic worlds and varying them even within single works, he incessantly integrates them into a dynamic, open universe of the ‘man of transformations’ (in Wacław Borowy’s phrasing) in accordance with the ontic position and experience of a Romantic writer. Diversity and variance of poetic forms in Mickiewicz is counterbalanced by his leaning towards regularity and structural connectedness: cycles. As early as his first critical manifesto, he opposes a schematic labeling of his creative output; he presents the history of European poetry in terms of overlapping traditions and gradual differentiation of national literatures.


1984 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-39
Author(s):  
Roger D. Spegele

The history of recent efforts to establish a science of international politics may be usefully viewed as elaborate glosses on David Hume's powerful philosophical programme for resolving, reconciling or dissolving a variety of perspicuous dualities: the external and the internal, mind and body, reason and experience. Philosophers and historians of ideas still dispute the extent to which Hume succeeded but if one is to judge by the two leading ‘scientific’ research programmes1 for international politics—inductivism and naive falsificationism —these dualities are as unresolved as ever, with fatal consequences for the thesis of the unity of the sciences. For the failure to reconcile or otherwise dissolve such divisions shows that, on the Humean view, there is at least one difference between the physical (or natural) sciences. and the moral (or social) sciences: namely, that while the latter bear on the internal and external, the former are concerned primarily with the external. How much this difference matters and how the issue is avoided by the proponents of inductivism and naïve falsification is the subject matter of this paper.


2019 ◽  
pp. 83-94
Author(s):  
Jarosław Ławski

The subject matter of the present article is the image of library and librarian in a forgotten short story by a Polish-Russian writer Józef Julian Sękowski (1800−1858). Sękowski is known in Polish literature as a multi-talented orientalist and polyglot, who changed his national identity in 1832 and began to write only in Russian. In the history of Russian literature he is famous for Library for Reading and Fantastic Voyages of Baron Brambeus, an ironic-grotesque work, which was precursory in Russian prose. Until 1832 Sękowski was, however, a Polish writer. His last significant work was An Audience with Lucypher published in a Polish magazine Bałamut Petersburski (Petersburgian Philanderer) in 1832 and immediately translated into Russian by Sękowski himself under the title Bolszoj wychod u Satany (1833). The library and librarian presented by the author in this piece are a caricature illustration proving his nihilistic worldview. Sękowski is a master of irony and grotesquery, yet the world he creates is deprived of freedom and justice and a book in this world is merely a threat to absolute power.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-382
Author(s):  
Dunja Fehimović ◽  
Ruth Goldberg

Carlos Lechuga’s film Santa y Andrés (2016) has enjoyed worldwide acclaim as an intimate, dramatic portrayal of the unlikely friendship that develops in rural Cuba between Andrés, a gay dissident writer, and Santa, the militant citizen who has been sent to surveil him. Declared to be extreme and/or inaccurate in its historical depictions, the film was censored in Cuba and was the subject of intense controversy and public polemics surrounding its release in 2016. Debates about the film’s subject matter and its censorship extend ongoing disagreement over the role of art within the Cuban Revolution, and the changing nature of the Cuban film industry itself. This dossier brings together new scholarship on Santa y Andrés and is linked to an online archive of some of the original essays that have been written about the film by Cuban critics and filmmakers since 2016. The aim of this project is to create a starting point for researchers who wish to investigate Santa y Andrés, evaluating the film both for its contentious initial reception, and in terms of its enduring contribution to the history of Cuban cinema.


Author(s):  
Christopher J. Berry

Examines Hume’s account of economic development as a subset of the history of civilisation, which is presented by him as a history of customs and manners. Since Hume believes that the subject matter of ‘economics’ is amenable to scientific analysis, the focus is on his employment of causal analysis and how he elaborates an analysis of customs as causes to account for social change. This is executed chiefly via an examination Hume’s Essays, though the History of England (as a test case) and the Treatise of Human Nature for its expression of Hume’s seminal analysis of causation are also incorporated.


Author(s):  
Dilan Tuysuz

John Milton, in his epic poem Paradise Lost, describes the expulsion of Adam and Eve from heaven, leading to the beginning of the oldest struggle. However, the representation of the devil in Milton's work, which is considered responsible for all evil in the world, is striking. The fact that Milton's devil's temptation has taken precedence over the story of expulsion of Adam and Eve is similar to Batman being overshadowed by the evil character Joker. Batman, who has many virtues and positive qualities as a superhero, has not impressed the audience as much as wicked Joker. But what makes the bad characters attractive to the reader/audience in Milton's Satan and the Joker? Is the Joker mentally ill? Is there a rebellion like the Satan's behind the Joker's malicious actions or is it possible to talk about a different motivation? The aim of this chapter is to explore the answers to these and similar questions by taking a journey through the psychology of evil. Thus, it will be possible to understand whether our admiration of bad characters is a reflection of the darkness within us.


Author(s):  
Józef Wróbel

This chapter discusses the theme of Jewish martyrdom in the works of Adolf Rudnicki. Without losing sight of the universal dimensions of the theme he was taking up, Rudnicki enriches the subject-matter with characteristics that are specifically Jewish. First, the situation of Jewish society during the occupation differed from that of other nations. Jews were pushed to the very bottom of the invader's hierarchy. Their life and death depended not only on Germans but also on the aid of Poles among whom they lived, which was not always forthcoming. A second specific feature is derived from Rudnicki's chosen artistic genre, which monumentalized the suffering of Jews by including them in the biblical circle and the almost 2,000-year history of the Diaspora, the wandering and persecution with which God tries his chosen people. This problem dominated the writing of Rudnicki for at least ten years. Undoubtedly, the literary situation in the first half of the 1950s was decisive in Rudnicki's abandonment of the theme, since the subject of the war was quickly recognized as outdated. The chapter then studies occupation literature.


1961 ◽  
Vol 16 (04) ◽  
pp. 233-260
Author(s):  
T. Hugh Beech

Can the National Pension Scheme as a whole now be expected to maintain solvency? On what lines may the Scheme be expected to develop in the future? Should contracting out not have been permitted?The temptation to go into these and other fascinating questions will be resisted as far as possible; it is proposed instead to confine the subject matter of this paper reasonably closely within the area implied in the title. In order to establish the context in which the present situation has arisen, it is appropriate, however, to begin with a very brief survey of the more recent history of national and private pensions in Britain before the passing of the National Insurance Act 1959, which will be referred to henceforward simply as ‘the Act’; the situation before the Act comes into operation will similarly be referred to as ‘pre-Act’. When the Act comes into operation two new situations will arise; ‘Contracted-in’ and ‘Contracted-out’. There are thus three conditions to consider, and as far as possible when using expressions in connexion with contracting out such as saving, extra cost, etc., it will be stated whether these are by comparison with the contracted-in or pre-Act position, lack of clarity on this point having been a source of confusion in some of the literature on the subject.


1999 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 17-19
Author(s):  
Nicole Picot

The following words preface Francoise Cachin’s introduction to Marie-Thérèse Cavignac’s Les bibliothèques des musées en Aquitaine: Richness and diversity! Reading this volume demonstrates how wide and varied is the subject matter of the museum libraries in the Aquitaine region, whether it be the library in the Bonnat Museum in Bayonne or in the national museum at the Château de Pau, those in museums specialising in the history of Aquitaine, the Pays Basque or the Périgord, or those in museums dealing with prehistory or contemporary art or seaplanes, the customs service or folk art.This description is just as valid for the rest of France. Considerable effort has been put into the modernisation of French museums during the last twenty years or so and their libraries have benefited from this renewal as well. I would like in this paper to describe some of the strengths of libraries and documentation centres in museums of art, and to try and define their role within their institutions and within the network of French art libraries.


1967 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-51
Author(s):  
J. K. Newman

These revolutionary conceptions of metre which were encountered in Ennius by his first audience served in the Annales, his most influential work of all, to elevate to a new plane the history of Rome. The word ‘history’ here is important. It is difficult to say in what precise sense the ordinary Greek accepted Homer as history. Certainly Thucydides discusses the Iliad as history, but that is only half of Homer, and even accepting the Iliad with all its gods and goddesses as a literal account of what took place at Troy the listener would be conscious that it was all a very long time ago. But the subject-matter of the Annales was far from being all a very long time ago. Scholars have pointed out that there was precedent in Hellenistic epic for the treatment of historical events in verse, but this is not a subject on which easy generalization is permissible.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document