Student profiles
Anna Lanfranchi
Email: anna.lanfranchi@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
Twitter: @lanfranchi_lk
Previous Education
Bachelor’s degree: Humanities (2012)
Master’s degree: Modern Philology (2015)
(Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy)
University of Manchester
PhD Translation and Intercultural Studies
Thesis Title
Contacts and Relationships between Italian and British Publishing Houses at the Beginning of the 20th Century
Supervisors
Dr Francesca Billiani & Professor Stuart Jones
Research Summary
This doctoral project investigates practices and dynamics informing the emergence and evolution of the translation rights import from Britain (and, marginally, the US) to Italy between 1900 and 1948. The increasing quantity and quality of fictional and non-fictional translations from English issued in Italy since the late 1920s constitute the empirical evidence supporting this project. To date, this phenomenon has been addressed by studies focusing either on the repercussions on the cultural and social environment of pre-WWII Italy in terms of aesthetic and political orientations (Billiani 2007), or investigating the political context and Mussolini’s Fascist propaganda and censorship (Rundle 2010). On the contrary, transnational networks encompassing Italian, British and American authors, publishers, and literary agents have received very little critical attention, as well as the economic and professional dimension of such cultural exchange. By evaluating a set of case studies and relying on extensive archival research in Italian and British archives, this project aims to question the chronological boundaries of the ‘decennio delle traduzioni’ (Pavese 1951), while highlighting points of rupture and continuity of European publishing practices from the early 20th century to the years following the Second World War.
Research interests
Book and Publishing History, Translation Studies, Archival Research.