Ithaca College

Marella Feltrin-Morris (Associate Professor, Modern Languages and Literatures) recently published an article entitled "Persuasive Spaces: Translators' Prefaces to the Divine Comedy" in Forum Italicum (Spring 2016). 

The article posits translators’ prefaces as democratic spaces of individuality, which are too often influenced by factors that hinder the translator’s freedom of expression and that are, to some extent, enslaved to a strictly persuasive function. A close examination of various translators’ prefaces to Dante’s Divine Comedy highlights recurring themes and persuasive strategies along with deviations from the norm that might suggest alternative avenues towards a more illuminating way of inhabiting this unique locus. By unveiling the points of contact between the space of the source text and the space of the translator’s individuality, the former is infused with renewed life and the latter with new meaning.