‘Translating’ Valperga: A Journey Through Mary Shelley’s Italy

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay addresses how the manifold Italianness of Mary Shelley’s Valperga informs our translation of the novel into Italian. Valperga narrates – and in part fictionalizes, especially through its female figures – Italian Medieval history, based on the author’s wide-ranging and scrupulous research into multiple historiographical sources from Machiavelli to Muratori to Villani. It also engages with the Italian cultural and political scene of Shelley’s own time. The novel was composed between the revolutionary moti of 1820–21 and the later Risorgimento, and powerfully reflects the troubled political climate of the age. Valperga draws on Shelley’s experience of living in early nineteenth-century Italy, as well as on her reading knowledge of Italian, a language that she was successfully endeavouring to learn to speak at the time. There is therefore a special appropriateness, and also a special responsibility, in translating the novel into the language and culture that played such an important role in its formation. This essay provides significant examples of the challenges involved in the translation process.