Appunti English Language Plescia Shakespeare - Lingua inglese magistrale

30/09/2019

1)

Saint Jerome: protector of translators, he translated the bible

memento mori

Light, glasses, books, > you are doing something that transcends your

mortality, you are leaving something for posterity

Cicero, St Jerome > beginning of a thesis on translation

Translation and history of English

Evolution of words, e.g. sick: 1) vomit (standard, traditional meaning) 2) ill (American)

3) cool (Netflix &co)

That was a sick lecture!

How does a word which has a completely negative sense evolve like this (completely

positive)?

Several ways of looking at translation

Linguistica e lettorato solo 1 semestre

Guida ai corsi d’inglese, copisteria Mirafiori

02/10/2019

2)

Vittoria Colonna

Did Shakespeare read Italian (in Italian or in French?) and French literature? If he did, it

was thanks to travellers-translators, such as Italian people who were in the English

court in England, for example John Florio, born in Switzerland, his father was from

Sicily and Florio brought up books, teaching manuals, etc. Even without reading what

he wrote, we know that an Italian in London could move and spread culture. Italian

language was very valuable in England at that time. Translation, an

Translation itself is very important as a theme for English Renaissance.

Elizabethan art

1) Translation (inside), early modern period 2) the way translators today deal with

literary English, translation studies, what should they do while dealing with a

bygone time

Diachronic approach

Problem > audience

Traduzione a fronte: like a simultaneous translation, like watching a film with subtitles,

it does not cancel out the original

What the role of translation was at Shakespeare’s time

The Taming of the Shrew: premises (man-woman relation) are completely new for the

contemporary Western reader

Shakespeare deals with passions of humanity, but there also (quite often) very

The Taming of the Shrew)

localised situations (such as in people living in a very

specific context

How do we take this very specific historical situation and bring it to the Italian

audience? I have first of all to suspend any judgement.

I need to be as philologically accurate as possible.

If I translate for the stage, I have to deal with the director’s vision.

A text reasonates in a specific culture and in a specific way. It’s hard to tell a woman

who has been violated ‘don’t worry it’s just Shakespeare’ while she reacts to the

Taming.

Either it is a marriage of convenience where the woman has been submitted or they

are going to work together by establishing a sort of pact, as if they were saying ‘in

et’s go to bed,

front of society we are going to carry on gender roles’ (l in the end, so it

is not a boring relation) 1

Note of the staging of the Shrew, violent conflicted couple that do find an agreement

in the end, not a violent end, positive direction of various women (directors), more

optimistic view.

Straight jacket choice is maybe a bit exaggerated, but it is up to the director.

Final paper: choose what translation to do

For the page (you cannot change or omit anything) or the stage (you can cut out

something which is not clear, the meaning is not all in the text, some of it is in the

actors, some of it is in the audience which can be involved, etc.)?

Who is your audience?

Propose a passage (entro il 6 novembre) why you choose that, approach (page, stage,

brave adaptation e.g. Shakespeare for children)

07/10/2019

3)

Before English

c.6000 BC Britain cut off from continental Europe by English Channel

c.5000 BC Proto-Indo-Europeans living in Eastern Europe and Central Asia

c.1000 BC Germanic Indo-European tribes living in parts of modern-day Germany

c.500 BC Celts inhabit much of Europe, and beginning to colonize the British Isles

55 BC First Roman raids on Britain under Julius Caesar

43 AD Roman occupation of Britain under Emperor Claudius (beginning of Roman rule

of Britain)

410-436 Roman withdrawal from Britain

c.450 Anglo-Saxon settlement (Angles, Frisians, Saxons, Jutes) of Britain begins

Old English

450-480 Earliest Old English inscriptions

597 St. Augustine arrives in Britain (beginning of Christian conversion of the Anglo-

Saxons)

c.600 Anglo-Saxon language covers most of modern-day England

c.660 “Cædmon's Hymn” composed in Old English

731 The Venerable Bede writes “The Ecclesiastical History of the English People” (in

Latin)

792 Viking raids of Britain begin

c.800 Old English epic poem “Beowulf” composed

865 The Danes launch full-scale invasion and occupy Northumbria

871 Alfred the Great becomes king of Wessex, encourages English prose and

translation of Latin works

871 “The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle” is begun

878 Danelaw established, dividing Britain into Anglo-Saxon south and Danish north

911 Charles II of France grants Normandy to the Viking chief Hrolf the Ganger (the

beginning of Norman French) 2

c.1000 The oldest surviving manuscript of “Beowulf” dates from this period

1066 The Norman conquest under William the Conqueror

Middle English

1086 “Domesday Book” compiled

c.1100 London becomes de facto capital of England

c.1150 The oldest surviving manuscripts in Middle English date from this period

1154 Eleanor of Aquitaine, French wife of Henry II, becomes Queen Consort of England

1154 “The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle” discontinued

1167 Oxford University established

c.1180 The “Ormulum” text of the monk Orm completed

1204 King John loses the province of Normandy to France

1209 Cambridge University established

1349-50 The Black Death kills one third of the British population

1362 The Statute of Pleading replaces French with English as the language of law

(although records continue to be kept in Latin)

1362 English is used in English Parliament for the first time

c.1370 William Langland writes “Piers Plowman”

1384 John Wycliffe publishes his English translation of “The Bible”

1385 English replaces Latin as main language in schools (except Universities of Oxford

and Cambridge)

c.1388 Chaucer begins “The Canterbury Tales”

1399 Henry IV becomes first English-speaking monarch since before the Conquest

c.1450 The Great Vowel Shift begins

Early Modern English

1476 William Caxton establishes the first English printing press

c.1500 Start of English Renaissance

1526 William Tyndale prints his English translation of the New Testament of “The Bible”

1539 “The Great Bible” published

1549 First version of “The Book of Common Prayer” published

c.1590 William Shakespeare writes his first plays

1604 Robert Cawdrey publishes the first English dictionary, “A Table Alphabeticall”

1607 Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the New World, established

1611 The Authorized, or King James Version, of “The Bible” is published

1616 Death of William Shakespeare

1622 Publication of the first English-language newspaper, the “Courante” or “Weekly

News”

1623 First Folio of Shakespeare’s works is published

1702 Publication of the first daily English-language newspaper, “The Daily Courant”, in

London

1755 Samuel Johnson publishes his “Dictionary of the English Language”

1763 Britain wrests control of Canada from the French

Late Modern English

1777 Last native speaker of the Celtic Cornish language dies

1782 George Washington defeats Cornwallis at Yorktown and Britain abandons its

American colonies

1788 British penal colony established in Australia

1788 First publication of “The Times” newspaper in London

1788 Noah Webster publishes “The American Spelling Book”

1795 First English settlement at the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa

1804 Lewis and Clark document exploration of routes to American West

1828 Noah Webster publishes his “The American Dictionary of the English Language”

1834 Abolition of slavery in the British Empire 3

1840 British colony established in new Zealand

1865 United States ends slavery after Civil War

1922 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) founded

1928 First edition of the “Oxford English Dictionary” is published

1947 India and Pakistan gain independence from Britain

1954 Sir Ernest Gowers’ “The Complete Plain Words” published

1989 Second edition of the “Oxford English Dictionary” is published

Shakespeare’s English: beginning of Modern English

st

Compares 1 folio’s (opposed to quarto → each page is a single printed sheet ie. Folio;

folded sheet makes four pages. People didn’t casually buy printed plays to read, it was

mostly theatre related people who would) spelling with modern versions of the “To be

or not to be” speech (e.g.)

Problems of translating from what is broadly the same linguistic place (so within the

same linguistic place) but is situated in the past and carries marks of it

BEST LINGUISTIC LABEL → MORE SPECIFIC AND TECHNICAL

Terminology: Early Modern English (> linguistic perspective) or Elizabethan English (>

political connotation) or Renaissance English or Shakespeare English

→ all can be problematised

When do they start-end? With the birth of Elizabeth or Shakespeare?

Renaissance very specific though differentiated across countries

09/10/2019

4)

Characteristic of modern version/infolio version of Hamet

Spelling (These are diachronic variations from Early Modern English and

contemporary English )

(niude, Arrowes)

→ silent “e”

deuoutly

→ u > v (read “v”)

→ capital letters → some of the nouns

dye,

→ y > i → productive in today’s English: 1) die (morire) 2) dye (tingere) but there

are graphic variations without differences in meaning also in Early Modern Period →

high level of synchronic variation (no difference in meaning) → less standardization →

the higher the degree of standardization, the lower the degree of variation

(connotation, more or less formal) → the idea of a standard does not exist yet, there is

not yet an official dictionary or linguistic academy, the Royal Academy will be created

in the 1760s for a desire of standardization/enlightenment, categorization, standard

also for scientific communication.

Punctuation

→ at the time volatile, a bit casual

→ books were physically composed, there was a great amount of errors, differences

between in quarto (printed before, so sometimes more reliable)/in folio (1623). There

were difficulties in spelling when the plays were put down. Es. Hamlet

FOLIO Solid, philosophical-platonic, innocent man trapped in a body, he wishes to

release his soul

QUARTO Oullied, = dirty, protestant idea, singne body; pronunciation was the same

→ we don’t have anything written by Shakespeare, so punctuation was added by

someone else and folio and quarto are reconstructions 4

In tipografia, l'in-quarto o in-4º è un formato dei libri. Nei libri antichi il formato in-

quarto si otteneva piegando due volte un foglio intero, la prima volta lungo il lato

minore, la seconda lungo il lato maggiore. Il fascicolo o segnatura constava di 8 pagine

ossia 4 carte, da cui il nome del formato. I filoni, cioè i segni della vergatura più

distanziati tra loro simili appunto a grossi fili visibili in controluce nella carta, erano

orizzontali, mentre la filigrana si trovava nella parte centrale vicino alla cucitura.

Nei libri moderni il formato in-quarto è dato dall'altezza del libro, misurata al

frontespizio, variabile convenzionalmente da 28 a 38 cm

In-folio (abbreviato in-fol.) è la locuzione latina, da cui deriva la meno usata locuzione

italiana "in-foglio" (abbreviato "in-fogl."), con la quale s'intende un formato dei libri.

Nei libri antichi il formato in-folio si otteneva piegando un foglio intero una sola volta

lungo il lato minore, in modo da avere quattro facciate ossia due carte. I filoni, cioè i

segni della vergatura più distanziati tra loro, simili appunto a grossi fili visibili in

controluce nella carta, erano verticali, mentre la filigrana si trovava al centro di una

delle carte. Il fascicolo, o segnatura, veniva poi costituito da più fogli piegati inseriti

uno dentro l'altro. Nell'Indice generale degli incunaboli delle biblioteche d'Italia (6 voll.,

Roma, Libreria dello Stato, 1943-81), contro una pluricentenaria tradizione

bibliografica, l'in-folio è stato rinominato "in-2º".

Nei libri moderni il formato in-folio è dato dall'altezza del libro, misurata al frontespizio,

convenzionalmente superiore a 38 cm

14/10/2019

5)

History of English in 10 minutes - video

Presence of Latin and Anglo Saxon vocabulary

55 BC First Roman raids on Britain under Julius Caesar

A lot of problems with the Celts

43 AD roman occupation of Britain under emperor Claudius, beginning of roman rule in

Britain

410-436 Roman withdrawal from Britain (words having to do with building mostly),

there was not a big battle. Zero period of Latin influence to remember different phases

in which Latin came to England. When the romans are here there is no English and no

England. Mostly free, but there isn’t a strong influence on culture. “Zero period” 1)

prehistorical Latin period 2) the words Romans leave are not very many, they are

embedded with the history of territory

Castrum

Ex. city of camp > cities developed from the present of military camps.

Where economic activity develops, a city will probably follow.

Manchester, Winchester, Gloucester

Place names: (faster way, you skip a syllable).

vallo)

Words having to do with building: street, wall (

They left words having to do with building because of stone building. Nordic people

tend to build in wood.

Not the lexical elements you bring, whether the receiving culture needs them or not. If

the new culture needs technology, then it will probably absorb words having to do with

technology.

Influence? Not really because there is not a culture to influence.

450 anglo-Saxon settlement (Angles, Frisian, Saxons, Jutes) of Britain begins (there

was already somebody there, although settlement doesn’t make one think like that)

450-480 Old English is developing, it goes on up to 1066, the Norman conquest under

William the Conqueror.

3 500 years period

Inscriptions are mostly funerary, mainly in a specific alphabet 5

597 st. Augustine arrives in Britain, beginning of Christian conversion of the Anglo-

Saxons. First actual period of Latin influx.

Germanic tribes arrive, fight and the Angles and the Saxons prevail.

These tribes speak different dialects, mutually intelligible, it is not the same language

but they can all understand each other.

th

7 century > Anglo Saxon language, influence of Latin. “Il nome della rosa” the worst

of the arrival of the Church. Most of western civilisation was preserved through the

work of monks who preserved western civilisation (also Arabic, development of

philosophy). Medicine, church life, recipes. A lot of Latin vocabulary, but not everyone

used it, just an intellectual elite. The basic vocabulary was Germanic, Anglo-Saxon.

660 Caedmon’S Hymn, composed in Old English, most of these poems have to do with

religious life. This is very typical, that religion inspires verses (not just in Christian

religion)

731 The Venerable Bede writes “The Ecclesiastical History of the English People” (in

Latin), for scholars, Latin was the Lingua Franca at that time. Everybody who needed

th

to be connected in a network of culture spoke Latin, this lasted until the 18 century.

Anglorum gentis,

An incredibly important text: he writes it in Latin but he uses the

word English. Not the heirs of people coming from the north of Europe

792 new Viking raids of Britain begin. These people in England do not see them

anymore as connected with the north of Europe, so other people from the north of

Europe were seen as invaders. Protecting oneself from invaders mean war and

boundaries, difference and exclusion. This reflects a lot of English history: settlement

vs war, but NOW these people think themselves as English against barbarians (Vikings

e.g.).

800 Old English epic poem Beowulf composted

865 the Danes launch full-scale invasion and occupy Northumbria, important issue of

identity, England: angla land, “Non facciamo scherzi, questa è casa nostra”

865 The Danes launch full-scale invasion and occupy Northumbria

871Alfred the Great becomes king of Wessex, encourages English prose and

translation of Latin works

Political project, cultural agenda, they need to be able to have a language. Circle of

intellectual of the king of Wessex, who encourages English prose

871 “The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle” is begun, identity is well establish

878 Danelaw established, dividing Britain into Anglo-Saxon south and Danish north

depose weapons and conversion to Christianity

911

Charles II of France grants Normandy to the Viking chief Hrolf the Ganger (the

beginning of Norman French) “let’s give them the most inhospitable part” said the

king. The feudal system is in place, a way for a king to rule by handing out privileges

in exchange of faithfulness.

2 periods of Latin influence: zero and one

How English developed a sense of identity in language

Old English period, synthetic language (> a quick way to say a lot of things). In Latin,

you only have to look at the end of the word to know whether it is masculine,

feminine, singular or plural. This doesn’t happen with English nowadays, for example:

love can be noun or verbs (5 people).

It’s organised in a different way because the declination tells what the case

(complement) is. The word/verb says it all in Latin. Declination and verbal morphology

> synthetic language, Old English is like that and works exactly like Latin but it does

not come from it, although it is linked with it. 6

Beowulf beginning, it is more a