364 Italian Bookshelf - Ibiblio

“Italian Bookshelf” Annali d’ italianistica 24 (2006) 387
reasons: to promote English trade endeavor; as an act of industrial espionage against the
Spanish; or to tap into the burgeoning book trade at home.
Several contributors note the translators’ and travel writers’ problematic relationship
with the truth; here too the analysis throws up significant diachronic issues. Hosington,
for example, notes how “both traveler and translator may feel constraints to ‘tell the
truth’, the former by recounting accurately what he or she has seen and experienced, the
latter by searching out the greatest possible equivalences” (148), and shows how William
Barker bucks this trend by introducing original, fictitious elements to his translation of
Domenichi's La nobiltà delle donne. Developments such as these are linked astutely by
Aercke to early theories of the novel, and the relationship between the two disciplines
and more obviously creative forms of writing is explored in the final section entitled
“Towards Art and Parody.”
Such insights constitute the volume's main claim to originality, and more in-depth
discussion of them would have been desirable, although the contributory and exploratory
nature of the volume clearly made this aspect impractical. Nonetheless, more focused
definition of the two key terms, in particular translation, would have been helpful. For
instance, for the purposes of this volume, translation appears to comprise activities
ranging from lexicography to intertextuality and plagiarism. Di Biase, in the most
theoretically sophisticated contribution to the volume, links translation to the condition of
exile in applying Said’s theories to the life and works of the Florios; however, the
“essential link” he posits is established only by narrowing the scope of “travel,” and
simultaneously broadening the definition of “translation” to include broadly cultural as
well as linguistic activity. Khoury goes as far as to say that “there is only translation”
(91), while Zhiri’s essay on Leo Africanus forms perhaps the most cogently argued
challenge to the limits of translation as such. Such strategies are of course justified in the
light of recent developments in translation studies, but a general introduction addressing
such issues, with Di Biase’s essay used instead as a conclusion, might have improved the
balance of the volume, which at times lacks in depth what it offers in breadth. More
rigorous proof-reading would also have helped. An interesting introduction to a new field
of study, then, which leaves considerable scope for more rigorous, monographic analysis
in the future.
David Gibbons, Milan, Italy
Erasmo di Valvasone. Angeleida. A cura di Luciana Borsetto. Manierismo e
Barocco, vol. 5: Collana diretta da Guido Baldassarri e Marziano Guglielminetti.
Alessandra: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2005.
Only few Renaissance scholars have chanced to come across, in their readings, the name
of Erasmo di Valvasone, and even fewer are those who have had the opportunity to read
some of his works, including what most likely is his masterpiece: the religious epic poem
entitled Angeleida. And yet, Milton read this work, which left some mark on his
imagination, since many passages of his Paradise Lost reveal the great bard’s
indebtedness to Erasmo di Valvasone’s Angeleida.
With this edition — the first in about one-hundred and sixty years, and the only one
with an extensive introductory essay and rich commentary — Luciana Borsetto makes
Erasmo di Valvasone’s poem accessible to twenty-first-century readers, provides a