Joaquim de Araújo’s Italian correspondents and the story of a failed translation

Abstract

Drawing on the existing studies on Araújo’s bequest kept at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice, the article presents the first results of a research project still at its initial stage that aims to reconstruct the network of contacts between the different actors in the field of Portuguese literature translated in Italy between 1880 and 1930. The first part sets out and interprets the data collected on Joaquim de Araújo’s 39 Italian correspondents: the consistency of the correspondence, the chronological extent of the epistolary exchange, the places where the letters came from, the languages in which the correspondence was exchanged. The second part analyses, in particular, the correspondence of the librarian Vittorio Baroncelli, author of a sketched out translation of Júlio Dinis’ novel As Pupilas do Senhor Reitor, of which only the first three chapters appeared in a Venetian magazine and which was never completed. The transcripts of the letters from Vittorio Baroncelli and Roxana Lewis Dabney are included in the article in Appendices 1 and 2.

Keywords
portuguese literature translated; correspondence; Joaquim de Araújo; Vittorio Baroncelli