Hell or inferno? : a comparative analysis of four English translations of extracts from Dante's Inferno

Abstract

In this thesis I propose to examine a crucial Italian writer's most influential work and its translation into English. The thesis will start off with a discussion about the idea of poetry as an untranslatable genre, what theorists have said on the matter and ways how poetic devices such as form, structure, meter, rhyme, alliteration etc. could somehow be translated into another language. Following this I will take a look at Dante's style of writing and certain features and common characteristics in his writing. I will also outline briefly the Commedia's journey from Italy to England in order to understand the interest of English translators in Dante's work and the reason for the multiple translations that exist of his main work. The next section will tackle the actual translations. Due to the large number of translations, this thesis will only focus on a number of notable translations of the work, otherwise the thesis would not be able to cover all the translations properly. The translations considered in my thesis are: Henry Francis Cary's translation at the beginning of the nineteenth century, being one of the very first translations into English; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's translation, being the first American translation, and thus could prove useful in uncovering different approaches towards the art of translation; Dorothy Sayers's translation; and Mark Musa's relatively recent translation, a translation which could shed light at today's attitude towards translation. With such a comparative analysis, this thesis would also span the last two hundred years of translation, and thus could bring out the latest translation issues in the translational field. I will also restrict myself to a number of crucial cantos, namely Cantos I, III, V, XXXII and XXXIII, which will serve as specimen to the whole poem. With this dissertation, I try to examine the truth behind the assertion that poetry is untranslatable. Dante's Divina Commedia has been influential in English literature almost since its conception, therefore this work must have somehow been conveyed successfully to the English authors and readers. For this reason, I chose four of the most significant English translations, so that I could analyse the success of these translations as works of poetry. I chose Cary's and Longfellow's translations from the very beginning, being the first complete, and successful, translations in their own respective countries. Sayers's highly regarded translation was chosen as it was the most successful translation written by a woman, therefore it could provide a new angle from which we could view the poem. It also one of the most highly regarded translations of the poem into English. For the fourth translation, I read excerpts from various translations, including Mandelbaum's and Hollander's translations. I finally opted for Musa's translation as it brought a nice balance to my argument since it varied from the other translations already chosen. Poetry is a very acoustic literary form, especially in a poem such as this one which is built around rhyme. Thus, the process of my analysis, which is heavily, although not exclusively, based on phonetics, required readings aloud of the translations, as well as close reading of the original to get the gist of Dante's own style. Books which helped me in my research include: Translation Studies (Susan Bassnett), The Art of Translation (T. H. Savory), The Translation Studies Reader (Lawrence Venuti ed.) for a general background of literary and poetic translation. Books which deal specifically with Dante's work and its translations include: Visions of Dante in English Poetry (V. Tinkler Villani), L'Opera di Dante nel Mondo (Enzo Esposito), Dante's Style in his Lyric Poetry (Patrick Boyde), The Cambridge Companion to Dante (Rachel Jacoff ed.) as well as a number of other academic essays and books.