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• Translate or not, foreign words

  8-37

  Maurizio Trifone

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  376

  In the early twentieth century, Gabriele D’Annunzio successfully proposed tramezzino instead of the English sandwich. Equally successful are some proposals formulated by Bruno Migliorini in the 1930s: autista and regista for the French chauffeur and régisseur. However, the original coinages of Arrigo Castellani in 1987 fail to take root: fubbia for smog, guardabimbi for babysitter, intredima for weekend, velopattino for windsurf, and vendistica for marketing. At the beginning of the 2000s, the volume by Giovanardi, Gualdo, and Coco Italian – English 1-1 reopened the debate among scholars. In 2015 the petition “Dillo in italiano”, launched by Annamaria Testa, achieved enormous success and demonstrated the intolerance of a large part of public opinion towards the massive influx of anglicisms. Following the petition, the Accademia della Crusca established the Incipit Group, a group of experts responsible for monitoring the entry of new anglicisms and suggesting possible Italian alternatives. In 2017, the Nuovo Devoto-Oli dictionary included in its lemmary the section Per dirlo in italiano, containing over 200 cards, that trace a brief history of as many English words or phrases that have penetrated Italian, explaining their meaning and context of use and suggesting a possible Italian equivalent. Il Nuovo Devoto-Oli broadly welcomes the most common anglicisms, helping those who do not know their precise meaning; but at the same time it has no reluctance to propose an Italian alternative, in the profound belief that such an approach is helpful to the reader and makes a positive contribution to the Italian language itself.

• Danese Cataneo: «felicissimo spirito» in Tasso's documents. The Amor di Marfisa and the Gerusalemme liberata

  8-20

  Tancredi Artico

  Views:

  414

  Published in 1562, Danese Cataneo’s epic-chivalric poem Amor di Marfisa had a wide but undervalued influence in Torquato Tasso’s masterpiece, Gerusalemme liberata. In this short essay I’ll provide the necessary evidences to demonstrate the existence of a deep connection between those two poems, and establish how it is organized. In particular, Cataneo’s literary legacy, which is underlined by a long list of quote, is strongly perceptible for what concerns the expression of feelings and thoughts. Amor di Marfisa, in this regard, gives to the young Tasso an unusual example of epic poem interested in characters’ psychology: aspects such as the self-analysis and the fragmentation of the ego are underrated in Ariosto’s Orlando furioso and all the other Italian poems in ottava rima, whereas they are fundamental in Cataneo’s poem. More than just an example, it represents for Tasso a training ground and a mine, where he founds themes and lexicon that later will be used in Gerusalemme liberata.