Ithaca College

Marella Feltrin-Morris (Modern Languages and Literature) presented a paper at the Canadian Society for Italian Studies Conference held in Venice, Italy, on June 24-26. The title of the paper was "Respectful Infidelity: The Divine Comedy in Translators' Prefaces."

Feltrin-Morris's presentation focused on the difficult relationship between a "classic" text and its translators, exploring the reasons behind the need to re-translate a canonical text, despite the risk of unpleasant comparisons with previous versions and the accusation of violating an untouchable original. Through a close examination of several translators' prefaces to Dante's Divine Comedy, Feltrin-Morris isolates certain common themes: fidelity, failure or inadequacy of the translation, and the translators' efforts to establish themselves as scholars. However, the study of translators' prefaces yields much more than a mere glimpse into the care that goes into a specific translation. Indeed, the ways in which translators choose to populate the little space they are granted to present their work is quite revealing as to the role of translation in different time periods.