Studi e ricerche

“Antonio, il mercante della nostra storia”: Adapting The Merchant of Venice for Italian Children

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Abstract

This essay discusses the challenges of adapting Shakespeare’s play in narrative form for young readers. It cites the history of such adaptation, thinking about the ‘set of instructions’ authors have provided child readers to respond to the problematic elements of the play (usury, religious and personal prejudice, mercenary marriages, homosexual attraction, cuckoldry). It tracks Tosi’s experience of translating/adapting the play and examines the narrative and ideological choices she made in her illustrated version (2015). The power of this story for children, Tosi argues, lies in its potential to ask questions relevant to their lives today.


Open access

Published June 10, 2021 | Language: en

Keywords Narrativization • Charles and Mary Lamb • Portia • Adaptation • Shylock • The Merchant of Venice • Translation • Children’s literature • Lewis Carroll • Venice

Copyright © 2021 Laura Tosi. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-503-2/011


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