Derek Mahon’s Take on Italy

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_article_298
dc.title	Derek Mahon’s Take on Italy
dc.contributor.author	De Angelis Irene
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing
dc.type	Research Article
dc.language.iso	en
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/riviste/english-literature/2016/1numero-monografico/derek-mahons-take-on-italy/
dc.description.abstract	Derek Mahon’s writings inspired by Italy date back to the Autumn of 1998, when he spent four months in Rome, which was his base for visits to Naples, Pompeii and Sorrento. The Collected Poems (1999) include “Roman Script” and other poems connected to Italian culture, such as “High Water” about Venice, as well as a series of translations and adaptations drawn from sources ranging as widely as Michelangelo’s sonnets and Ariosto, to Umberto Saba and Pier Paolo Pasolini. This essay explores the background of these poems, including references to his relatively unknown Adaptations (2006). I intend to show that Mahon’s view of Italy is also shaped by his deep knowledge of the great Latin classics, from Ovid and Juvenal, to Propertius and Horace, and that his wide-ranging cosmopolitan insights enrich his and his reader’s ways of looking at the world at large.
dc.relation.ispartof	English Literature
dc.relation.ispartof	Vol. 3 \| December 2016
dc.issued	2016-12-23
dc.dateAccepted	2016-08-05
dc.identifier.issn
dc.identifier.eissn	2420-823X
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.identifier.doi	10.14277/2420-823X/EL-3-16-3
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Adaptations
dc.subject	Adaptations
dc.subject	Derek Mahon
dc.subject	Derek Mahon
dc.subject	Italy
dc.subject	Italy
dc.subject	Pasolini
dc.subject	Pasolini
dc.subject	Rome
dc.subject	Rome

Research Article
open access peer reviewed

Irene De Angelis Università degli Studi di Torino, Italia

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abstract

Derek Mahon’s writings inspired by Italy date back to the Autumn of 1998, when he spent four months in Rome, which was his base for visits to Naples, Pompeii and Sorrento. The Collected Poems (1999) include “Roman Script” and other poems connected to Italian culture, such as “High Water” about Venice, as well as a series of translations and adaptations drawn from sources ranging as widely as Michelangelo’s sonnets and Ariosto, to Umberto Saba and Pier Paolo Pasolini. This essay explores the background of these poems, including references to his relatively unknown Adaptations (2006). I intend to show that Mahon’s view of Italy is also shaped by his deep knowledge of the great Latin classics, from Ovid and Juvenal, to Propertius and Horace, and that his wide-ranging cosmopolitan insights enrich his and his reader’s ways of looking at the world at large.

Published

Dec. 23, 2016

Accepted

Aug. 5, 2016

Language

Keywords: Derek Mahon • Italy • Rome • Adaptations • Pasolini

permalink http://doi.org/10.14277/2420-823X/EL-3-16-3

Copyright: © 2016 Irene De Angelis. 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.

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