Sulla maniera e la utilità delle traduzioni di Madame de Staël: la visione del futuro della letteratura italiana alla luce della teoria di traduzione

Abstract

This article will present and explore the ideas of the writer Madame de Staël, an important figure in the European intellectual world of the early 19th century. A woman of letters and aristocrat of Swiss origin, she played a significant role above all in French cultural life, but she is also remembered in Italy thanks to a famous episode marking the beginning of the debate between classicists and romantics in that country. Her text, Sulla maniera e la utilità delle traduzioni [On the Manner and Usefulness of Translations], aimed to suggest to Italians how they could break out of the impasse of schematic and repetitive literature; although based on glorious cultural traditions, it lost its former importance and creative force. The essay will explain the historical context in which the text was written, before proceeding to analyse the writer’s proposals from the perspective of selected theories of literary translation. The study will allow us to understand how Madame de Staël’s suggestions, controversial from the point of view of many Italians in the literary world of the time, were far-sighted and necessary to stimulate the search for new trends in Italian literature during the Romantic period.