Journal of Italian Translation

300
Journal of Italian Translation
achieved with: “And so” “Per questo”, “threshold” “l’uscio”, and “to the
one who has conducted him this far” “e a colui che l’ha qua su’ condotto.”
For the same terzina, Singleton uses the less accurate “gate” and medieval
“hither”, while Mandelbaum chooses “gateway”, and gives a rather unclear
if not awkward rendition: “..to him who guided him above/my
prayers were offered, even as I wept.”
It is my hope that the above examples have sufficed to convince the prospective
reader of the great merits of this translation. In addition to clarity, precision,
and eloquence, it also offers an informative introduction, canto outlines,
and in-depth notes, drawn from Robert Hollander’s many years of scholarship
and teaching. The Hollanders’ translation is a true work of mastery, a gift of
poetry offered in a spirit of grace to novices and professionals alike.
We anxiously await the Hollanders’ translation of Paradiso-Robert
Hollander is presently completing the commentary to the third canticle.
FINA MODESTO
Humanism and secularization from Petrarch to Valla, by Riccardo
Fubini. Translated by Martha King. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003,
pp. viii + 306.
Riccardo Fubini, professor of Renaissance History at the University
of Florence, has authored several fundamental studies on Italian Humanism.
This volume, first published in Rome in 1990 and originally entitled
Umanesimo e secolarizzazione da Petrarca a Valla, serves as a collection of
essays on Italian Humanism, almost all of which had been previously
published in journals and symposia proceedings between 1966 and 1987.
Although composed of individual essays, this is, without doubt, a coherently
argued book. Dedicated to writers of great stature such as Petrarca,
Poggio Bracciolini, Lorenzo Valla, Flavio Biondo and Leonardo Bruni, this
volume concentrates on a unique topic of research which Fubini defines
as the following: “My primary aim is to identify an ideological movement
that develops out of Petrarch’s work and that is given its most precise and
structured configuration by the aforementioned authors of the first half of
the fifteenth century” (p. 1).
The movement analyzed by Fubini is not Humanism in its entirety,
but, rather, only a part of it: “I have not intended to propose a paradigm
of humanism in my discussion of the humanist movement from Petrarch
to Valla; indeed quite the opposite. Existing simultaneously and in competition
is a patristic humanism that finds its most authoritative voice in
Ambrogio Traversari, as well as a genuine expression in the letters of
Francesco Pizolpasso” (p. 7). In particular, Fubini is strongly interested in
defining the intellectual movement that, in the first half of the fifteenth
century proposed and defended a secular model of culture. The Italian