"Il vocabolario e la strada." Self-Translation between Standard Italian and Regional Dialects in the Works of Salvatore Di Giacomo, Luigi Capuana, and Luigi Pirandello

The present dissertation explores the work of three playwrights active both in regional dialects and standard Italian in the post-Unification period, who consistently translated their own work from one code into another: Salvatore Di Giacomo, Luigi Capuana, and Luigi Pirandello. Their "bilingual writing" is best understood in light of the process of linguistic unification of Italy, described as a shift from prevailing non-bilingual diglossia to prevailing diglossic bilingualism. Considering self-translation as an extreme case of author-translator relationship, I compare the Italian and dialectal version of each play, highlighting the central features of the rewriting process. The analysis especially focuses on phenomena of linguistic interference, self-censorship and semantic attenuation, paying also attention to the systematic loss of "internal linguistic networks and argots" (Berman, La traduction 63-64). At the same time, translation acts a relatively free space for linguistic experimentation, allowing the three authors examined to challenge the idea of a fatal link between language and nation. Self-translation between standard Italian and regional dialects thus marks a very important transition in the Italian modernity, helping to close the rift between spoken and written language and eventually paving the road to the national renovation of Italian dramatic literature fully accomplished in the 1920s and 1930s.Ph.D.2017-06-16 00:00:0