Effetto Sterne: La Narrazione Umoristica in Italia da Foscolo a Pirandello (The Sterne Effect: Humoristic Narration in Italy from Foscolo to Pirandello)

Effetto Sterne: La Narrazione Umoristica in Italia da Foscolo a Pirandello (The Sterne Effect: Humoristic Narration in Italy from Foscolo to Pirandello), ed. Giancarlo Mazzacurati, Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1990. Pp. 440. Lire 40,000.

The "Sterne effect" in this important collection of new essays by a team of academics updates the seminal work by G. Rabizzani. Clotilde Bertoni shows how Sterne's influence on European novelists (Jean Paul, Pushkin, Balzac) and, particularly, on Italian humorists was filtered through the medium of Frenáis's French versions (most notably in the case of Tristram Shandy, fully translated for the first time into Italian as a "three-decker" only in 1922-1923). The first Italian version of A Sentimental Journey (Venice, 1792) was also derived from Frenáis's translation. Another Italian translation (1812), published anonymously, is obviously based both on Frenáis's and on the Venetian edition, since seven of its chapter headings coincide with those of the latter and do not resemble their original counterparts.

Matteo Palumbo finds echoes of a larmoyant and pathetic Stemism in Foscolo's Jacopo Ortis; traces...