Elisa Segnini

This special issue discusses texts and cultural artefacts that defy the idea of Europe as a homogeneous and coherent construct, with a focus on north/south, East/West divisions. Starting from a series of case studies, the contributions address differences and divisions and attempt to answer questions such as: Where does Europe begin and who establishes these boundaries? Who is considered European and who is not? How is difference described, represented and imagined in zones that are positioned within Europe, often at its core? What metaphors or narrative strategies are used to describe the other within Europe? Do writers from minority cultures participate in orientalized representations of their own culture? If orientalism can be conceptualized as the opposite of civilization, is it necessarily connected to notions of backwardness? If so, how does this play out in a European context? The range of the case studies considered in this issue is broad: chronologically, the essays span the nineteenth century to the present, and geographically they go from Russia to France, from Croatia and Hungary to Catalonia and the Basque countries. Overall, the essays take a transnational approach that considers ethnic, cultural and linguistic differences and notions of belonging within and beyond political units. A common ground is provided by recurrent critical concepts that offer a useful theoretical framework for discussion, such as Roberto Dainotto's argument that Europe constructs itself not only in opposition to the non-Western, but also to its internal other, and Milica Bakić-Hayden's notion of 'nesting orientalism': that is, the idea that countries who have been orientalized can also appropriate this discourse. This special issue originates in a panel held at the 2015 American Comparative Literature Association annual convention in Seattle, which was dedicated to literature and its audiences.

This article provides a framework to examine multilingualism in fiction in the age of convergence, when best-selling novels have become parts of the phenomenon known as ‘branding’, and cultural production has become inseparable from the mechanisms that regulate global markets. It argues that, if the contemporary global novel tends to render the plurilingual experience implicitly to ensure translatability, the use of dialect has become crucial for the construction of marginality on screen for products designed to travel internationally. By focusing on a case study grounded in the Italian context, a comparison between Roberto Saviano’s Gomorra (2006), with its extensions in theatre, cinema, TV and fandom, and Elena Ferrante’s L’Amica Geniale (2011-14), with its dramatic versions for the radio, the stage and television, it develops a model to compare the intersection of language, space and power in recent examples of transmedia storytelling. Drawing on studies of multilingualism and marginality, the article addresses the following questions: in what way did linguistic strategies influence the portrayal of the urban periphery as a marginal, subaltern space? How does transmedia transposition, understood as an act of interpretation, relate to interlingual translation? Does the relation between fiction and the socio-linguistic reality represented change in this process? To what ends is dialect deployed in transnational productions designed for global reach, and what characterizes the reception by Italian and international audiences?

This article brings together perspectives from world literature and translation studies to compare the international reception of two ‘glocal’ literary cases: Andrea Camilleri’s Montalbano books, and Elena Ferrante’s tetralogy L’amica geniale. The national and international success of these series raises important questions for scholars of translation studies, multilingualism, world literature and literary markets, and sheds light on the significance of different kinds of multilingualism in fiction and of their treatment in translation. The article addresses the following questions: how do monolingual book markets contain and discipline multilingual fiction? What happens when multilingual fiction travels through translation? How do we explain the present openness of the Anglo-American market to translated fiction with an emphasis on the vernacular? The author argues that while both Camilleri and Ferrante foreground cultural difference and linguistic incommensurability, the way in which they portray the experience of diglossia had an important impact in determining their national and international success as well as the route through which they achieved international visibility.

Frederika Randall is a literary translator from the Italian. In this interview, the main issues addressed are the effect of the internationalization of the book market on the world wide circulation of Italian fiction; the ethics and responsibility of the translator of Italian classics into American English and the challenges entailed in translating irony.

This essay suggests that the ultraminor can function as a paradigm to examine literature that emphasizes the minority status of the language in which it is composed. Engaging with Deleuze and Guattari's definition of minor literature and with Pascale Casanova and Lawrence Venuti's reflections on the role of translation in the shaping of world literature, it develops a comparison between two rewritings of Shakespeare into Italian dialects: Eduardo De Filippo's translation of The Tempest into Neapolitan and Luigi Meneghello's translation of Hamlet into vicentino. The essay underlines how these endeavors represent translations into languages that, at the time of writing, are considered by their authors in decline and doomed to extinction, and argues that both authors use translation to emphasize the historical memory of their native idioms. Both De Filippo and Meneghello, in fact, set out to challenge the subordinate status of Neapolitan and vicentino by proving that dialects are apt to express great thought as well as philosophical, abstract, and theoretical concepts.

Through an analysis of the novels written under the pen name Elena Ferrante and of the paratextual elements that surround them, this article examines the portrayal of Naples and its outskirts in these narratives, and how the specific geographical and cultural context is rendered and variously translated for different audiences. It argues that the concealment of the author's identity has enhanced the perceived authenticity of the texts, and that the emphasis on marginal backgrounds and subaltern characters entails a contradiction not dissimilar to the phenomenon that Huggan (2001) describes as 'staged marginality' in the context of postcolonial narratives. Ferrante's cultural specificity can therefore be read as a highly ambivalent discourse that entails both resistance and adherence to the mechanisms of a global market. Lastly, the article examines how the emphasis on dialect influences the process of translation for diverse readerships, showing the relevance of the 'Ferrante project' within world literature debates.

Full text:
http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/RVK4fNV5QwHvsaKn8K8F/full

The years between 1928 and 1930, when Pirandello was living in Berlin, coincided with the translation into Italian of Evreinov's theoretical essays and with the first production of Brecht's Three Penny Opera. Nikolaj Evreinov (1879-1953), while younger than Pirandello, shared with him a common philosophical and aesthetic background. Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), who belonged to a different generation, had opposite political views and very different aims for his theatrical practice. However, these three theatre practitioners were all concerned with interrogating the mechanisms of the theatre. They challenged the static view that juxtaposed the stage and the auditorium, defining boundaries between areas for " playing " and " watching, " and they proposed instead a dynamic view based on the interrelation of these spaces and their functions. All three practitioners examined the relation between actor and character and character and spectator. Finally, all three were engaged in drawing attention to the essence of the theatre—to what defined theatre as such—but they were also fascinated with the extension of performance into other domains. Pirandello produced two of Evreinov's plays at the Teatro d'Arte in 1925, but he became acquainted with Evreinov's theatrical theories a few years later, probably in 1929. At this time, Pirandello and Brecht were both living in the same city. Pirandello was exploring the theatrical scene of the Weimar Republic and was busy writing Questa sera si recita a soggetto (Tonight We Improvise), as well as several screenplays for the cinema. Brecht was at a critical point in his career; he was in the process of becoming well known and he was re-envisioning theatrical practice in relation to pedagogy. While numerous scholars have explored the connections between Pirandello and Evreinov, fewer have researched the connections between Pirandello and Brecht, and, to my knowledge, the three figures have never been examined in conjunction. In this paper, I will illustrate how the paths of Pirandello, Evreinov, and Brecht crossed.

In what follows, after illustrating the context and the origin of Questa sera si recita a soggetto, I will focus on how specific intertexts and descriptions of regional and national features are rendered in the version by Harry Kahn (1929), and on the impact of this translation on the productions by Hans Carl Müller and Gustave Hartung.  Subsequently, I will consider the very different approach of Pirandello’s French translator, Benjamin Cremieux, Cremieux’s collaboration with Georg Pitoëff and the
audience’s responses to the Parisian production. With this analysis, I aim to contribute to Pirandello scholarship, particularly on issues of reception, and to shed light on drama translation as well as on the role of the translator in the process of play productions. In doing so, I also aim to question the porous boundaries between translations and adaptations, as well as the hierarchy according to which scholars have often read the “original” in relation to subsequent versions.

This event brings together experts in a variety of disciplines (Literary Studies, Theatre, Film, Opera), professional translators, artists and publishers. Our objective is to highlight the role of translators as cross-cultural mediators, and to underline the power dynamics at play when regional representations circulate beyond national and linguistic boundaries.

In the Italian context, from Pasolini’s Friulian poetry to Emma Dante’s Sicilian plays to Nino Ricci’s Italian Canadian fiction, countless artists have engaged with the cultural, linguistic and ethnic diversity that characterizes Italian communities within and beyond the nation state. These works have always constituted a particular challenge for translators; however, recent developments such as the extraordinary success of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan series and of Camilleri’s Sicilian crime fiction among Anglophone readerships testify to a growing interest in narratives marked by distinctive cultural/linguistic features. During the conference, participants will address case studies that draw attention to how cultural specificity is recreated for a variety of audiences.

Our focus will not be limited to the translation and reception of Italian works. The event includes a series of comparative panels: we will compare translations from “minor” to global languages in different settings, and examine the implications of publishing translations in Canada and North America. Some of the talks will address specific theoretical issues such as how to render intertextuality in translation or the stance of the self-translator. The event also includes a translation theory workshop open to all graduate students and a presentation by the theatre company Bellaluna Production.

http://blogs.ubc.ca/translationaudiencesreception/

This website was developed within the project “Translating Culture for the Stage: the Case of Luigi Pirandello” directed by Elisa Segnini and funded by the Canadian Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

It examines the reception of Questa sera si recita a soggetto from the prima assoluta in Königsberg till today. The bibliography lists a wide range of academic articles, theatre reviews published in international newspapers, as well as photographs of the various mise en scènes. The website also features a list of translations in various languages and two comparative analyses of translations of Questa sera si recita a soggetto. Finally, it offers ideas and suggestions to teach Pirandello’s work within the context of an Italian Studies course.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/questaserasirecitaasoggetto/

At the turn of the nineteenth century, as inquiries about degeneration shaped medical, anthropological and philosophical discourses, masks flourished as portraits, ornaments, and disguises. Drawing upon psychoanalysis, anthropology, feminist and queer studies, Elisa Segnini explores tales that revolve around masks and mask-making in relation to nineteenth-century thought, offering innovative readings of fictional and dramatic works by Max Beerbohm, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Jean Lorrain, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Andrey Bely, next to artifacts such as the plaster cast of the Inconnue de la Seine, the waxes of criminals held in Cesare Lombroso’s museum, Rodin’s ‘horror masks’ modeled after a Japanese dancer. In the fin-de-siecle imagination, this comparative study argues, masks addressed two concepts: the repressed elements of the psyche and the perceived parameters of a declining phase in Western civilization. This monograph demonstrates to what extent the medical, sociological and aestheti...

This essay suggests that the ultraminor can function as a paradigm to examine literature that emphasizes the minority status of the language in which it is composed. Engaging with Deleuze and Guattari’s definition of minor literature and with Pascale Casanova and Lawrence Venuti’s reflections on the role of translation in the shaping of world literature, it develops a comparison between two rewritings of Shakespeare into Italian dialects: Eduardo De Filippo’s translation of The Tempest into Neapolitan and Luigi Meneghello’s translation of Hamlet into vicentino. The essay underlines how these endeavors represent translations into languages that, at the time of writing, are considered by their authors in decline and doomed to extinction, and argues that both authors use translation to emphasize the historical memory of their native idioms. Both De Filippo and Meneghello, in fact, set out to challenge the subordinate status of Neapolitan and vicentino by proving that dialects are apt t...

In the age of convergence, bestselling novels have become parts of the phenomenon known as ‘branding’, and cultural production is highly conditioned by the mechanisms that regulate global markets. This article argues that if the contemporary global novel tends to render the plurilingual experience implicitly to ensure translatability, the use of dialect has become crucial for the construction of marginality on screen for products designed to travel internationally. By focusing on a case study grounded in the Italian context, a comparison between Roberto Saviano's Gomorra (2006), with its extensions in theatre, cinema, TV and fandom, and Elena Ferrante's tetralogy L'amica geniale (2011–2014), with its dramatized versions for radio, stage and television, it compares the intersection of language, space and power in recent examples of transmedia storytelling. Drawing on studies of multilingualism and marginality, the author addresses the following questions: how do linguisti...

This special issue discusses texts and cultural artefacts that defy the idea of Europe as a homogeneous and coherent construct, with a focus on north/south, East/West divisions. Starting from a series of case studies, the contributions address questions such as: Where does Europe begin and who establishes these boundaries? Who is considered European and who is not? How is difference described, represented and imagined in zones that are positioned within Europe, often at its core? What metaphors or narrative strategies are used to describe the other within Europe? Do writers from minority cultures participate in orientalized representations of their own culture? If orientalism can be conceptualized as the opposite of civilization, is it necessarily connected to notions of backwardness? If so, how does this play out in a European context? The range of the case studies considered in this issue is broad: chronologically, the essays span the nineteenth century to the present, and geographically they go from Russia to France, from Croatia and Hungary to Catalonia and the Basque countries. Overall, the essays take a transnational approach that considers ethnic, cultural and linguistic differences and notions of belonging within and beyond political units. A common ground is provided by recurrent critical concepts that offer a useful theoretical framework for discussion, such as Roberto Dainotto’s argument that Europe constructs itself not only in opposition to the non-Western, but also to its internal other, and Milica Bakić-Hayden’s notion of ‘nesting orientalism’: that is, the idea that countries who have been orientalized can also appropriate this discourse.