Chair: Rinamaria Narducci, University of Pennsylvania
Organizer:  Millicent Marcus, University of Pennsylvania

Speakers:

1. TRANSLATION AS RETURN: UGO FOSCOLO AND CARY'S VERSION OF THE DIVINE COMEDY, Cosetta Gaudenzi, University of Georgia at Athens
Translation occupies a liminal space which transgresses the synchronicallyand diachronically limited. The hybrid condition of translation iscomparable to that of exile in which an individual reinvents himself/herself to fit a different spatial and temporal context. In this paper, Idiscuss translation, exile, and their relation in late eighteenth- andearly nineteenth-century Europe. I intend to show how translation wasemployed by exiles to acquire status within a new context. Transplanted ina foreign environment, immigrants are compelled to confront their identitywith that of the natives and thereby develop a mechanism of cultural survival which emphasizes and defends the remembered values and qualitiesof their own homeland. By translating, by teaching their native language,and by writing essays on their own literature, several eighteenth- andearly nineteenth-century political Italian exiles in Great Britainpresented themselves as different and worthy. In my paper, I discuss in detail the significant contribution of the Italian exile UgoFoscolo, who assisted in making Henry Francis Cary's version of Dante'sCommedia (1814) into the first authoritative English translation bypraising it extensively in magazines.

2. "O LOENSIN A-O RIO JANEIRO O NO SE GHE POEIVA CIÙ VEDDE." RAGIONI PER TORNARE, RESTARE O RIPARTIRE IN UN ANONIMO GENOVESE DEL 1883, TIZIANA BAROLINI E JOHN FANTE, Marco Codebò, University of  California  at Los Angeles
Il Loensin che non puo’ piu’ resistere a Rio de Janeiro e’ uno dei due protagonisti della Ginn-a de Sampedaenn-a, romanzo in dialetto sull'emigrazione ligure in America Latina, uscito anonimo nel 1883 e felicemente ripubblicato nel 1992 a cura di Fiorenzo Toso. Questo paper trattera' quindi dell'emigrante in quanto personaggio letterario che rivive sulla carta i dilemmi e le angosce sofferti nella vita dai suoi confratelli in carne ed ossa. La ricerca si concentra sull'emigrazione transoceanica che negli anni dal 1870 al 1950 ha visto milioni di italiani attraversare, spesso nei due sensi e piu' di una volta, l'Atlantico con destinazione le Americhe.  I testi analizzati, Ginn-a de Sampedaenn-a, Umbertina di Helen Barolini e 1933 Was a Bad Year di John Fante rappresentano tre scelte possibili per chi viva l'esperienza dell'emigrazione: tornare nella madrepatria nell'anonimo genovese, tornare per ripartire in Helen Barolini, restare nella terra di adozione in John Fante.  I testi verranno analizzati a partire da tre strumenti critici la rappresentazione dello spazio, gli archetipi culturali e i meccanismi creatori di identita' culturale. Applicando le categorie di Juri Lotman si cerchera' di individuare le polarita' ideologiche di cui sono portatori i modi della rappresentazione dello spazio. Si ricerchera' poi la presenza, nei testi in questione,  di archetipi culturali tipici della tradizione letteraria italiana quali l'idealizzazione dei luoghi natii e la maledizione per chi li abbandona, con riferimento d'obbligo ai  Promessi Sposi e ai Malavoglia.  Si analizzeranno infine gli strumenti creatori di identita' culturale, quali la lingua, il dialetto, la letteratura e il baseball, nella loro funzione o di recupero dei legami con la terra natale o di assimilazione al paese ospite.  La ricerca cerchera' infine di verificare quanto la collocazione degli autori in questione su una delle due sponde dell'Atlantico abbia influito sulla loro rappresentazione dell'emigrante e della sua problematica navigazione fra due continenti culturali.

3. STRANIERI A CASA NOSTRA: EXILE AND RETURN AT ITALY'S EASTERN BORDER, Pamela Ballinger, Bowdoin College
This paper examines a very particular form of return, that of ethnicItalian "exiles" from the Istrian peninsula who came to Italy as refugeesafter World War II. This large scale displacement of Italians from Istriafollowed out of the protracted post-war territorial dispute between Italyand Yugoslavia, which eventually resulted in the partition of VeneziaGiulia. Ironically, then, ethnic Italians "returned" to the madrepatria asesuli or exiles leaving what had once been Italian territory, expressingtheir sense of difference from other Italians even as they stressed theiritalianit^?. Istrian exiles often claim to feel like "stranieri a casanostra" in a double sense: in the Italian state where they currently resideand on visits to the original homeland (Istria), which they often no longerrecognize. The esuli's kin and acquaintances who remained behind in Istria,the so-called rimasti, phrase their interior displacement in a similarmanner: even though they remained on the territory, they feel strangers inIstria, as well as in the madrepatria (Italy) to which they once belonged.This paper explores the intertwined cultures of return created during thelast fifty years by the esuli and rimasti in the borderland between Italyand former Yugoslavia. Through rituals, literary production and "memorytrips" of different sorts, esuli and rimasti stage literal and figurativereturns. In doing so, both groups relocate genuine Istrian-ness as residingin their community. Although these two populations possess a sometimesdifficult relationship at the official level, the ways in which each group understands its form of "return" remains in dialogue (if but implicitly)with the other. Both groups also draw upon deep-rooted traditions of exileand return/redemption dating back to the irredentist struggle under theHapsburg Empire. This paper explores the narrative continuities (anddiscontinuities) in these formulations of identity, homeland and return, aswell as the dialogics of such returns among esuli and rimasti. The paperalso inquires into the specificity of such return in the case of forcedexile and Cold War partition; in what ways do the various returns of theseItalians differ from other Italian immigrant groups, in what way do theyprove similar?

NOTE: VCR as well as a slide projector.