Yves Bonnefoy traduttore di Shakespeare: il poeta e la prova del dialogo

Contemporary French poet Yves Bonnefoy has always been attracted by English poetry, especially by Shakespeare’s work. Translating Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets has been a fundamental experience for him. The contact with a different culture, a different language and a different sort of poetry has been an important moment in his poetic experience. The dialogue between the French and the Elizabethan poet, which started in the 1950s, hasn't stopped yet and it offers some interesting perspectives to study Bonnefoy's work from a new point of view. Translation – which is first of all a poetic experience to him – is in fact the chance to get in touch with somebody else's poetry and to establish a dialogue with his poetic universe. Such a dialogue requires on the one hand an ‘ethic’ attitude on the translator's part, that is an attentive listening and a deep understanding of the original text. However, Bonnefoy has to create a new ‘poetic’ text in his own language. This is why the ‘seeds’ of his own poetry are also present in his translated texts, in which it is possible to clearly distinguish both the presence of the French poet’s own voice and his attempt to open his ‘speech’ to the specific quality of the Shakespearean poetry. On the other hand, such a deep contact with Shakespeare's work has changed the French poet, contributing to the development and maturity of his own poetry. Indeed, the Elizabethan poet is present in his work in different ways, in his critical essays as well as in his poems. Against this background, the aim of the present study is to define the complex dialogic forms and the osmotic relationships between the poetic experience and the experience of translation, which are considered two different moments of the same ontological research by the French poet.

The Bible in Medieval Love Lyrics: A Fundamental Element of European Poetry Books

The focus of this study is the relationship among three different manuscripts (Modena, Bibl. Estense, MS α.R.4.4; Firenze, Bibl. Laurenziana MS Rediano 9; and London, BL, MS Harley, 2253) and the poetry they transmit. The aim of this research is to show the ways that the Bible was used in the transmission of the lyric poetry in the three literatures that they represent: Occitan (primarily through Marcabru’s songs), Italian (through the love poetry of Guittone d’Arezzo), and Middle English (through the Harley love lyrics and the MS.’s primary scribe), in a medieval European context.

Cheering the soul: Ibn Qāḍī Baʿlabakk’s Mufarriḥ an-Nafs. Arabic edition, english translation, study and glossaries

The Mufarriḥ an-nafs (Soul-Cheerer), attributed to Badr ad-Dīn Muẓaffar Ibn Qāḍī Baʿlabakk, who served under the Ayyubids as the Chief Medical Officer of Damascus in the mid-13th century, was written as a comprehensive guide for physicians outlining different approaches to cheering the soul. The tractate is divided into ten chapters, which explore the nature of the soul, its distinction to the body as well as their connection through sensorial perception. Ibn Qāḍī Baʿlabakk distinguishes the bodily senses – hearing, vision, smell, taste, touch – and the inner senses, which he sees as stimulated through activities such as hunting and engagement in poetry and the sciences. The seventh chapter of the Mufarriḥ an-nafs includes an extended encyclopedia on materia medica as well as dispensatory of simple and compound drugs, which is devoted to treating the soul and remains unparalleled in the history of Islamicate medicine. My doctoral dissertation offers a complete recension and translation of the Mufarriḥ an-nafs based on a stemma codicum drawn from the seventeen extant text witnesses. The dissertation contextualizes the work, its author as well as sources, and features a text commentary that seeks to enable the reader to easily place and understand the Mufarriḥ an-nafs within the tradition of Galenic medicine. The glossaries on materia medica found at the end of the dissertation are aimed at facilitating access to the pharmacological dispensatory included in the seventh chapter.