Traduzione e ricezione delle scrittrici italiane del Novecento in Svezia. Alle soglie dell’immortalità letteraria

Abstract

Studying the translations in Swedish language of Italian twentieth century women writers, one is astonished by the randomness and the incompleteness. It is often the case of single translations published almost haphazardly and with lack of consistency when it comes to follow up the work of an author. Despite favorable critics, despite a Nobel Prize, the Italian women writers of the twentieth century have never really been established in Sweden. Except for a brief period, Elsa Morante and Natalia Ginzburg. Only the works of the latter could in theory rise to the status of a classic of in the mind of Swedish readers. This is not the case, however, of books by Grazia Deledda, which after a very successful period around the Nobel Prize in the twenties, have disappeared from the shelves of bookstores and libraries. It is as if these authors have fallen into some gray area of literature, almost an intangible cemetery for forgotten novels and old translations.

This work represents the first outcome of a mapping of the publishing of Italian women twentieth century writers in Sweden. Hence, the interest is also to publish a bibliography hitherto unedited of these authors in Swedish language translation.