Translating style : Tim Parks and the tradition of Anglo-Italian literary relations

Abstract

Scholarship examining the figure of the English writer in Italy as well as the impact of Italy on the English imagination has always featured prominently within the Journal of Anglo-Italian Studies. This is therefore an appropriate context in which to ask why it may seem that in recent years there have been comparatively few English writers whose work is significantly shaped by what Alice Leccese Powers referred to some time ago as the phenomenality of 'Italy in Mind.' Of course, that impression risks appearing ill-informed. To suggest that there may currently be a crisis in the tradition upholding the immediacy of Italy and of Italian culture within the English literary imagination is to overlook the work of Tim Parks (who provides the focus for this paper), or Marina Warner, or Simon Mawer, or Lisa St Aubin de Teran, or Tobias Jones. Italian life and culture features prominently in the texts of all these writers.