Translation as Accompaniment: Traveling with Tornabuoni’s Angel

The Book of Tobias was one of several Old Testament stories that Lucrezia Tornabuoni de’ Medici turned into Italian terza rima in the late fifteenth century.  At the beginning of her poetic journey, she invoked the angel Raphael, who traveled with the young Tobias to foreign lands, as her companion too. This talk will reflect on the companionship that emerges through the work of translation and adaptation, particularly as demonstrated in the vibrant Florentine circle of Tornabuoni and her son, Lorenzo. I will also address recent developments in translation studies as well as my own journey translating Tornabuoni into English - along with my more recent translation of Dacia Maraini’s “Chiara di Assisi: Elogio della Disobbedienza”. 

Jane Tylus is Andrew Downey Orrick Professor of Italian and Professor of Comparative Literature and of Divinity at Yale.  Her primary interests are in late medieval and early modernity, especially as regards issues of literary ownership, women’s literature, and religious studies. Her books include Who Owns Literature?: Early Modernity’s Orphan Texts (forthcoming, Cambridge’s Elements series); Siena, City of Secrets (2015); Reclaiming Catherine of Siena (Winner of the 2010 MLA’s Howard Marraro Prize for Best Work in Italian Studies); and Writing and Vulnerability in the Late Renaissance (1993). She recently translated  Dacia Maraini’s Chiara di Assisi: Elogio della disobbedienza for the series “Other Voices in Italian Literature” (Rutgers University Press, 2023); she has also translated the complete poems of Gaspara Stampa and Lucrezia Tornabuoni.  Curently she is co-writing a book with Bruce Gordon tentatively titled “Taking Leave: from Gilgamesh to today.” From 2013-2022 she served as General Editor of I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance.

Tylus’s previous appointments were at the U. of Wisconsin-Madison, where she served as Associate Dean of the Humanities and Arts, and at New York University, where she was founding director of the Center for the Humanities and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs.

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All times stated in Eastern time.