Publishing Contemporary Foreign Poetry - (Transnational Italian Cultures) by Mila Milani (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library.

The years following the Second World War saw an exponential increase in the translation of contemporary foreign poetry in Italy. The practice was at its most prevalent in the 1950s and 1960s, when publishing houses across the board almost doubled the number of foreign poetry titles in their catalogues. This remarkable phenomenon, however, has received scant critical attention, which has been limited to an aesthetic perspective. Publishing Contemporary Foreign Poetry: Transnational Exchange in the Italian Publishing Field, 1939-1977 is one of the first studies to examine the sociological significance of publishing poetry translations. Drawing on untapped archival materials, it investigates from an interdisciplinary perspective the processes and products of poetry translation, and how they impacted on publishing, cultural, literary, and political dynamics in Italy. It explores the internal reconfiguration of Italian culture, and how Italy sought to position itself in the world, without neglecting the contradictions of national and transnational cultural networks and movements. The book argues that translation was a means to modify power relationships in the field of poetry publishing and the contemporary literary arena; this ultimately changed the map of Italian cultural production and its transnational networks, thus anticipating the further developments provoked by globalisation in the 1980s.

Review Quotes

'Publishing Contemporary Foreign Poetry: Transnational Exchange in the Italian Publishing Field, 1939-1977 will be a fundamental resource for scholars seeking to further this fascinating history of Italian culture.'
Manuela D'Amore, Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift

'Milani's work is thus at the very centre of new trends and dynamics in Italian Translation Studies and research into book history. Her book will be a fundamental starting point and reference for research in the years to come.' Anna Saroldi, Modern Language Review

"An insightful analysis of the way that the translation of foreign poetry helped shape the Italian publishing industry and its power dynamics - enormously well-researched and highly readable."
Liz Wren-Owens, Cardiff University