French classics (re)translated in the "Biblioteca Romantica": the emblematic case of Madame Bovary

Abstract

With the collection "Biblioteca Romantica", edited for Mondadori from 1930 to 1938, Giuseppe Antonio Borgese introduced a new editorial conception, a project where (re)translation plays the leading role. The postface signed by Borgese for the first book of the series, La Chartreuse de Parme translated by Ferdinando Martini, became an actual manifesto, where he clearly showed his deep translatological consciousness and offered a reflexion on the cultural relations between France and Italy at the beginning of the 20th century. The importance given to the translator is what makes the "Biblioteca Romantica" a unique case on the Italian editorial scene of that time: the complicated events that preceded the translation of Flaubert’s masterpiece are here presented as an emblematic case of this new translatological sensibility.