Britain and Italy from Romanticism to Modernism: A Festschrift for Peter Brand by Martin McLaughlin
2003; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 98; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/mlr.2003.0406
ISSN2222-4319
Autores Tópico(s)Translation Studies and Practices
Resumo482 Reviews in an admittedly quite simplified version), and if,conversely, it is not understood as a transparent conveyor of meanings, then what can it do, and just how far can its limits be pushed? Brooks explores Montale's fundamental distrust of language in the remainder of the study. Although the poet saw language as itself part of the creative process, he was highly sensitive to its capacity to distort, to fall short, to obfuscate, to miss the mark. He therefore developed what Brooks calls the use of a 'secularized form of the via negativa* (p. 19) in which contradiction, paradox, silence, and other signs of lan? guage's limits are foregrounded. Poetry is, or should be, therefore,a modest, discreet art according to Montale; that modesty has deep roots in the congenital incapacity of poetry's own instrument (language) to capture fully Truth or experience, the ab? stract realm of transcendental thought, or the immanent world. Beyond Montale's relationship with his medium, one can argue forthe importance of other factors that conditioned his preference forthe via negativa: the historical vicissitudes during which he came of age; the more declarative and triumphal poetic traditions that preceded him, and against which he contrasted his art; his psychological and moral make-up. It remains true, however, that a poet qua poet is his language. To understand as deeply as we can not only figurative and structural linguistic elements of Montale's poetry, but also the poet's attitude towards his instrument, is an essential part of the critic's role?and one admirably fulfilled in this thoughtful and thought-provoking book. University of Chicago Rebecca West Britain and Italy from Romanticism to Modernism: A Festschriftfor Peter Brand. Ed. by Martin McLaughlin. Oxford: Legenda. 2000. xx+195 pp. ?27.50. ISBN 1-900755-30-0. This volume, in honour of Peter Brand, focuses on one of the areas in which he has made a major contribution to Italian studies, that of the 1957 volume on Italy and the English Romantics: The Italianate Fashion in Early Nineteenth-Century Eng? land (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). The collection has a brief preface by Brand's successor to the chair in Edinburgh, Lino Pertile, and is completed by the bibliography of his publications up to the year 2000. It was wise to concentrate on only one of Brand's lines of research as it enabled a group of colleagues to produce a coherent volume, exploring in their contributions the main themes covered in his book: politics, the arts, literature, and cultural life, carrying the links between the two nations beyond the second half of the nineteenth century to the early twentieth. In the introductory essay Martin McLaughlin focuses on the reception of Dante in Victorian England, which is a theme central to the Festschrift and is developed in de? tail in John Lindon's essay on 'Dante "intra Tamisi ed Arno" (and Halle-am-Saale): The Letters of Seymour Kirkup to H. C. Barlow'. This places the relationship be? tween the two scholars in the mid-1860s within a network of other Dantists, including Witte and Gabriele Rossetti. Gabriele's son is the subject of John Woodhouse's essay, 'Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Translation and Illustration ofthe Vita nuova', which includes a discussion of Rossetti's sketches, reflectingan interest in a drawing of Dante discovered by Kirkup which was then attributed to Giotto. The study of Dante is also prominent in T. G. Griffith'sessay, 'Italian Nationalism, Welsh Liberalism, and the Welsh Translation of the Divina Commedia*, which puts Daniel Rees's translation into its cultural context, with reference also to the political committment of the Welsh intellectuals of the time. The political aspect is the focus ofthe opening essay ofthe collection, 'Britain and the Italian Risorgimento', in which Denis Mack Smith traces public opinion in the years of unification, in response to the MLR, 98.2,2003 483 differentlines taken by Mazzini, Garibaldi, and Cavour. Mazzini is the protagonist of Ian Campbell's essay on 'Carlyle and Italy', where this political figure, together with Dante (and here Campbell pays tribute to Brand's 1985 paper on Dante and Carlyle), is shown to have moulded Carlyle...
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