John Florio and the Decameron: Notes on Style and Voice

Surprisingly, relatively little has been published on the notoriously fluctuant reception of the medieval author who has had in the anglophone world almost the largest amount of translations and editions ever made (Wright 1957; Galigani 1974; Armstrong 2010). The Decameron (1348) itself has a history both of dismemberment and of distortions, - produced deliberately or unintentionally by mediators, either translators or printers -, and was fully translated in English quite late in comparison with the other European vernaculars (Armstrong 2007). Indeed, the first complete translation dates back to 1620, and, as only some scholars claim, by the hand of the celebrated John Florio, unanimously recognized as one of the most outstanding interpreters of the Italian humanistic culture in the Elizabethan England (Wright 1953; Wyatt 2005). Translator, lexicographer, teacher, “bilingual Florio”, as he was called by his own pupils, “an Englishman in Italiane”, as he defines himself, embodies the most typical features of the Renaissance go-betweens, who “took advantage of their liminal position and made a career of mediating between two countries” (Burke 2005:23; Pfister 2005, 2009; Montini 2008). In my article, which is part of an ongoing project on John Florio’s works, I would like to reconsider the 1620 translation with a special focus on its repositioning within the early modern cultural transfer between Italy and England. By adopting the tools of stylistics as well as of historical pragmatics, specific objects of investigation will be Florio’s style as a (supposed) translator of the Decameron, the strategies he adopted in the practice of translation, -including rewriting and adapting, censoring and omitting-, and the dynamics of textual adaptation which may affect the specifically linguistic contribution of the practice of translation on the level both of lexis and of syntax. Considerations will also be made as to the use both of the linguistic norms within each language system and of the impact Florio’s translation of Boccaccio had on the target culture.