The passion for the real: empowering maternal precepts in the Italian translations of A.S. Byatt’s short stories 
15 August 2012
12pm
Venue: Room 209, Arts 1 (Building 206)
Host: Dr Eliana Maestri (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Sydney).
This presentation investigates A. S. Byatt’s fictional explorations of her mother’s identity as a storyteller and as her artistic model by looking at her unique autobiographical short story “Sugar” (1987) and its Italian translation “Zucchero” (2000). Feminist theories on feminist realism are used to locate the translated text within the Italian theoretical literature on mothers and daughters, and show that the Italian text offers an enhanced sensory and tactile representation of reality and the female body, which are part of Byatt’s mother’s conceptualizations and legacy.
Dr Maestri completed a PhD in Translation Studies and Gender Studies at the University of Bath in December 2011. She is now EUOSSIC Erasmus Mundus Postdoctoral Research Fellow in European Studies at the University of Sydney. Dr Maestri is also a visiting Lecturer in Translation Studies at the University of the West of England. She has taught at the University of Oxford, at the University of Bath and at University of Bristol. She has published a number of book chapters on translating autobiographical writing into Italian and French and articles in refereed journals. She is also in the process of publishing her PhD thesis.
Do join us.
