moneydaa.blogg.se - Dante's Inferno; Adapted by Marcus Sanders by Marcus Sanders

2000–2007: Robert & Jean Hollander - Comedy (Princeton Dante Project).

1980–1984: Allen Mandelbaum - Comedy (verse).

1967–2002: Mark Musa - Comedy (Penguin Classics).

I can name at least ten partial or complete translations which have appeared in English in the past few decades: 83 is an awful lot of translations, but of course the pace has hardly slackened since. Anything is better than the high-flown translator-speak that so many more self-conscious writers have turned it into.Ĭunningham's first volume covers the forty versions produced between 17 his second discusses the forty-three written between 19. It's not nearly as "poetic" as a lot of other modern versions, but that actually turns out to be something of a virtue.

I like very much their updated versions of Dante's famous extended metaphors, but for the most part their content to insert "moderns" only into lists of famous sinners - the central dramatis personae: Paolo and Francesca, Ulysses, Ugolino, all remain the same. In fact, my only quarrel with their method was that they didn't take it quite far enough.

etc.)įunnily enough, the result turns out to be extremely readable, even to a nit-picking pedant such as myself. Dante's poetry is transmuted into a kind of slacker valley speak, with frequent modern allusions to make the whole thing more "accessible" to readers (adding Elvis and Rush Limbaugh to the list of gluttons in the Inferno, Jimmy Swaggart to the liars, etc.

So far so good, but when it comes to the text, the artist and a non-Italian speaking writer friend of his decided to produce it themselves, with the aid of a few academic advisors and a lot of earlier versions.