An online seminar with Dr. Thea Rimini (Université de Mons, co-curator of Tabucchi’s collection for I Meridiani), Dr. Elizabeth Wren-Owens (University of Cardiff), Elizabeth Harris (Tabucchi’s translator), and novelist and journalist Andrea Bajani (University of Houston, author of Mi riconosci, dedicated to the memory of Antonio Tabucchi). Chaired by Luigi Pinton, Ph student in Italian at the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages (Department of Italian) at the University of Cambridge.
Please note, Dr Thea Rimini’s contribution will be in Italian.
Followed by Q&A.
Organised in collaboration with the Italian Section of the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics at the University of Cambridge
The seminar intends to remember Tabucchi’s intellectual figure and start a first survey of its cultural legacy. Such a critical reflection has a particular importance in the United Kingdom, where Tabucchi’s works have enjoyed perhaps a less widespread, but constant and now growing recognition, as the recent publications of Message from the Shadows: Selected Stories (2019) and Stories with Pictures (2021) by Archipelago Books, or the re-issue of Pereira Maintains, Requiem and Little Misunderstandings of No Importance for the Penguin Modern Classics series demonstrates. The contributions by Thea Rimini, Liz Wren-Owens, Elizabeth Harris, and Andrea Bajani will explore the material and literary legacy of Tabucchi, its international reception, with special attention to the English-speaking world, and the traces his works may leave on future generations of writers.
Thea Rimini teaches Italian language and literature at the Université de Mons in Belgio. She completed her studies at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and has written extensively on Italian modern and contemporary literature, literary translation and the relationship between cinema and literature. With Paolo Mauri, she has co-curated the Antonio Tabucchi’ collection for “I Meridiani” Mondadori (2018). Also on Tabucchi, she has authored Album Tabucchi. L’immagine nelle opere di Antonio Tabucchi (Sellerio, 2011) and curated Tabucchi postumo. Da Per Isabel all’archivio Tabucchi della Bibliothèque nationale de France (Peter Lang, 2017) and the recent Calvino, Tabucchi, et le voyage de la traduction (Presses Universitaires de Provence, 2022). She is co-director of Peter Lang’s «Liminaires – Passages interculturels».
Liz Wren-Owens is Reader in Italian and Translation Studies in the School of Modern Languages at Cardiff University. Her current research project, Translating Sicily, Adapting Sicily (LUP, forthcoming), explores the way that Sicily and Sicilianness have been constructed for readers and spectators in Italy and the Anglophone world, and the ways in which acts of translation and adaptation inform our understanding of Sicily as a regional, national, and transnational space. Previous publications have looked at the work of Antonio Tabucchi, translation and world literature, Italian diasporas in the UK and US, re-imaginings of Italian empire, the role of the intellectual in society, and Italian detective fiction.
Elizabeth Harris’s translations of Antonio Tabucchi, all for Archipelago Books, include Tristano Dies (Tristano muore), For Isabel: A Mandala (Per Isabel: Un mandala), and Stories with Pictures (Racconti con figure). For her various translations of Tabucchi, she has received a PEN-Heim Translation Fellowship, an NEA Translation Fellowship, The Italian Prose in Translation Award, and the National Translation Award for Prose. She is currently translating his essay collection Viaggi e altri viaggi (Travels and Further Travels), also for Archipelago.
Andrea Bajani (Rome, 1975) is one of the most respected and award-winning novelists and poets of contemporary Italian literature. He is the author of four novels and two collections of poems. His novel, Se consideri le colpe (Feltrinelli) If You Kept a Record of Sins (Archipelago Press), has brought him a great deal of attention. In just a few months, the book won the Super Mondello Prize, the Brancati Prize, the Recanati Prize and the Lo Straniero Prize. His works have been translated into many languages, and published by some of the most prestigious European publishers, such as Gallimard, Siruela, MacLehose, Atheneum, DTV, Humanitas. His last novel, Il libro delle case (Feltrinelli, The Book of Homes), was finalist for the Premio Strega and Premio Campiello and will be published in 17 countries. He now lives in Houston and teaches at Rice University.
For any information and to receive the Zoom links to attend the seminar please fill out THIS FORM or contact Luigi Pinton (lp514@cam.ac.uk) and Samuel FitzGibbon (sf683@cam.ac.uk)