ITALIANIRISH · The Reception of Irish Literature in Italy: 1900-1950

This research project aims to investigate crucial aspects of the reception of Irish literature in Italy during the first fifty years of the twentieth century, with special attention to the politics of translation and mediation in the fascist era. Having devised a theoretical framework that combines cultural and translation studies with evidence-based historical research, I will read archival evidence in the light of recent scholarship on cultural mediation/translation, and discuss the strategies adopted by translators, publishers and intellectuals in their attempt at introducing Irish literary products within Italian culture. This study will ascertain whether or not the Italian cultural system recognized Irish specificity within Anglo-American literature and, if so, in which ways such specificity was articulated. In order to investigate this topic, the research work will analyse both publications about Ireland and translations of Irish literary works, as well as the role of key mediating figures. This study will therefore explore how foreign literatures entered and affected the Italian cultural system, and will focus on Irish literature as a significant and yet understudied case. It will produce a ""cartography"" of the reception of Irish literature in Italy, while assessing the degree of awareness in Italy of the distinctiveness of Irish literature. The composite portrait of the various images of Ireland in Italy will also provide significant information about both Italian culture and its mediators, and consequently enhance our understanding of intercultural dynamics in early twentieth-century Europe.""