'Canzoniere or Songbook' : a comparative analysis of English translations from Francesco Petrarca's Canzoniere

Abstract

In this dissertation, five sonnets from a decisive Italian poet’s most crucial literary work, and the translations into English will be analysed. These sonnets are taken from Petrarch’s Canzoniere and the translations are by Sir Thomas Wyatt, Mark Musa, J.G. Nichols and David Young. This dissertation begins with a general discussion on the translation of poetry. Theorists, poets and even readers themselves have often questioned whether poetry can be translated or not, even though the translation of poetry is one of the most ancient types of translation. Is it true that poetry is untranslatable? If the practice of poetry translation has been around for so many centuries, why do academics and non-academics continue to question whether poetry is translatable or not? If it is accepted that poetry can be translated, nonetheless it is still considered to be the most difficult type of translation. What are the characteristics of poetry and consequently what are the specific problems of poetry translation? Is it true that translation of poetry is “an act of compromise”? Are there any strategies for poetry translation and what is the relationship between the poem and the translated poem, and the author and the translator? The second chapter focuses on the genre of the sonnet, since the source language texts chosen for this dissertation are all sonnets. The discussion is based on the sonnet as a genre, its origins and development and its particular form and structure. What are the features of the sonnet which distinguish it from other genres? Are these features maintained in the translations? Is form important for the translators? Do they seek to preserve the form? One might also ask, what role can translation play in shaping the history of literature? Through the discussion based on the sonnet, one can see that translation can play a very fundamental role in the history of literature, as it did in fact for this particular case of the sonnet. The third chapter focuses on Petrarch and his poetry followed by some information about the translators. In this section there is some brief biographical information about Petrarch, why is he considered to be a crucial figure in the history of European literature and also a discussion of his language and style. Over the centuries many translators worked on the task of translating some sonnets from the Canzoniere, if not the whole literary work. However for a detailed examination to be possible, only four translators’ works are analysed. The translators chosen are Sir Thomas Wyatt, Mark Musa, J.G. Nichols and David Young. The last three translators mentioned all wrote their translations in the twentieth century, while Thomas Wyatt is known as the first poet who translated a considerable number of Petrarch’s poems into English and is very often referred to as the first English Petrarchan. Wyatt might seem an unlikely choice for the analysis, especially when one sees that the other three translators wrote their translations in recent times. However Wyatt is chosen together with the three recent translators because he provides an interesting comparison of how translation with its views and priorities has changed over the times. Moreover, the three recent translators bring about an interesting comparison among themselves: that is how the translator, firstly as an individual person interpreting and rewriting a poem in a different language and secondly, having a different skopos and target audience, can write a different translation from another one by another translator, despite actually working in approximately the same period of time.