Lost in Translation: the Urban Setting of Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini’s Story of Two Lovers
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The contemporary urban environment often forms the setting for fictional narratives and in fifteenth-century Italy this was particularly the case for prose novelle and plays. Successful texts might then be translated for new audiences. Starting from Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini’s 1444 Historia de duobus amantibus (translated into six languages by 1540), this paper will follow the fortunes of the specifically Sienese location of the plot, and consider the way in which translators gauged the importance of setting in the transmission of the text to their specific audiences. Thus, Alessandro Braccesi’s 1474 translation for the Medici, reduced the Sienese setting to make the story more appealing to Florentine readers. How were “foreign” locations accommodated in translated texts: what did these offer audiences? Was there an exotic value for foreign settings? What symbolic or exemplary values were attached to places and countries?
The contemporary urban environment often forms the setting for fictional narratives and in fifteenth-century Italy this was particularly the case for prose novelle and plays. Successful texts might then be translated for new audiences. Starting from Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini’s 1444 Historia de duobus amantibus (translated into six languages by 1540), this paper will follow the fortunes of the specifically Sienese location of the plot, and consider the way in which translators gauged the importance of setting in the transmission of the text to their specific audiences. Thus, Alessandro Braccesi’s 1474 translation for the Medici, reduced the Sienese setting to make the story more appealing to Florentine readers. How were “foreign” locations accommodated in translated texts: what did these offer audiences? Was there an exotic value for foreign settings? What symbolic or exemplary values were attached to places and countries?