In 1816, the publication in Italian of Madamede Staël’s essay “On the Spirits of Translation”marked the beginning of a controversy betweenclassicists and romantics. The theoreticalprinciples and practices of translation receivedspecial attention in Italy, a territory that wastrying to define itself in terms of culture, giventhe impossibility of a unitary political projectin this historical period. Translation becamethe means of enriching Italian language, cultureand literature. A Translation Studies perspectivefocusing on the foreign, rather thanthe indigenous, traits of Italian culture, willdemonstrate how difference, via translation,became one of the constitutive elements ofnew definitions of Italian national identity.weiterlesen