Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ph5wq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T06:44:01.694Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2011

Alison Cornish
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Get access

Summary

This book explores the particular nature of vernacular translation, or volgarizzamento, in Italy in the time of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. While Italian literature, whose origins are squarely in the thirteenth century, is often described as ‘belated’, translation into Italian vernaculars, which begins at exactly the same time, has been admired as ‘precocious’. Elsewhere in Europe translation and commentary are associated with institutions and patronage, but in Italy around the time of Dante, widespread vernacular translation is mostly on the spontaneous initiative of individuals. Moreover these translations, which are largely anonymous and almost all in prose, are not finished works, but rather works in progress, as can be seen in their intricate manuscript tradition that comprises multiple versions and traces of interventions by many hands. Notaries, bankers and merchants of the northern Italian communes, whose dependence on the written word was unprecedented, became engaged in the transcription, domestication and circulation of ancient and foreign literature. As with the Internet today, Italians' sudden and wide access to reading and writing in this period had the effect of turning readers into writers. Vernacular translation, like Wikipedia, was an environment that lent itself to contributions by readers.

The phenomenon of vernacular translation in the first period of Italian literature (1250–1350) has been called ‘oceanic’. Of the 134 vernacular manuscripts dating from before 1350 catalogued in a recent census of the national library in Florence, 97 of them have content that can be described as volgarizzamento of classical or medieval material.

Type
Chapter
Information
Vernacular Translation in Dante's Italy
Illiterate Literature
, pp. 1 - 15
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Introduction
  • Alison Cornish, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
  • Book: Vernacular Translation in Dante's Italy
  • Online publication: 04 February 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511734762.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Introduction
  • Alison Cornish, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
  • Book: Vernacular Translation in Dante's Italy
  • Online publication: 04 February 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511734762.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Alison Cornish, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
  • Book: Vernacular Translation in Dante's Italy
  • Online publication: 04 February 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511734762.001
Available formats
×