| Summary: | <p>My thesis focuses on the Italian poet Giovanni Giudici (1924-2011) and specifically on his activity as a translator from Anglo-American poetry, during the decade 1950-1960. I have investigated Giudici’s translations from a twofold perspective. On the one hand, I acquired a detailed overview of the translations, attempting to establish a definitive and accurate chronology of them all – in most cases, the official dates of the individual texts published not coinciding with the later inclusion of the same texts in three separate collections. On the other hand, I analysed the stylistic and literary rendering of the foreign texts, evaluating their specific artistic value and, where relevant, emphasising in what way they are interrelated with Giudici’s original verse. In doing so, I used archival materials, examining drafts and comparing these with the final versions.</p> <p>In my first chapter, I discussed the emerging notion of error and showed how this soon becomes the bridging element between the poet’s alleged amateurish knowledge of the original languages and his hyperconscious conception of the literary practice. The most innovative aspect of this ambiguous poetics is the poet’s tendency to equate poetic language with what he calls ‘strange language’, that is translation itself.</p> <p>While dealing with each foreign text individually and showing how it contributes to the poet’s language and themes (such as, primarily, those of error, of strange language and of mask), I also argued that the translations of the 50s could fall under the category of ‘metaphysical poetry’. Not unlike other poets of his day, Giudici familiarised himself with ‘metaphysical poetry’ through T. S. Eliot, as I showed in my second chapter. I here devoted special attention to Giudici’s work on Eliot and presented some early translations of Eliot by him which have hitherto escaped critics’ attention. In the last two chapters, I analyse other foreign poets he translated, ranging from Donne to Emily Dickinson, from Milton to Pound.</p> <p>Finally, by mapping Giudici’s interests in Anglo-American poetry, my thesis highlights the centrality that translation progressively acquires alongside the production of the original verse and within the use of the poet’s mother tongue.</p>
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