Melchiorre Cesarotti (1730-1808) produced a blank verse translation into Italian of the rhythmic prose of James Macpherson's Ossian. On the basis of the numerous amendments to be found the three subsequent Italian editions of the Ossian (Padoa 1763 and 1772, Pisa, 1801), it could never be ascertained which English editions had served as source text for Cesarotti's translations and whether Italian variations could be led back to similar variations in the the English texts, or whether they were rather the independent and unwarranted work of the Italian translator. Our first successful search enabled us to clarify the nature of Cesarotti's role, somewhere between that of a translator and of a deft stylist looking for a new language for Italy's infant Romanticism. The first part of this dissertation is explanatory, critical and historical, it is followed by thorough appendixes, listing variants and cross-references leading back to the English original texts. The whole makes up a philological apparatus which will be put to use in the forthcoming publication of the Italian and English ossianic texts, side by side.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.69639 |
| Date | January 1993 |
| Creators | Spacagna, Giuseppe |
| Contributors | Gilardino, Sergio Maria (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | Italian |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of Italian.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001385881, proquestno: AAIMM91730, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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