1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910456798503321

Autore

Insana Lina N. <1970->

Titolo

Arduous tasks : Primo Levi, translation, and the transmission of Holocaust testimony / / Lina N. Insana

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Toronto, [Ontario] ; ; Buffalo, [New York] ; ; London, [England] : , : University of Toronto Press, , 2009

©2009

ISBN

1-4426-8736-3

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (342 p.)

Collana

Toronto Italian studies

Disciplina

853/.914

Soggetti

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface: Points of Entry -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction: Translation Matters -- 1. Transmission: The Witness as Translator -- 2. Source Texts and Subtexts: Translation and the Grey Zone -- 3. Transgression: Translation and Levi's 'Trapassar del segno' -- 4. Infinite Transaction: Testimonial Numismatics and the Narrative Exchange -- 5. Palinodic Reversal: The Trials of Translation -- Conclusion: The Witness's Tape Recorder and the Violence of Mediation -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Index of Primo Levi's works

Sommario/riassunto

One of twentieth-century Italy's greatest thinkers, Primo Levi (1919-1987) started reflecting on the Holocaust almost immediately after his return home from the year he survived in Auschwitz. Levi's powerful Holocaust testimonials reveal his preoccupation with processes of translation, in the form of both embedded and book-length renderings of texts relevant to Holocaust survival. In Arduous Tasks, Lina N. Insana demonstrates how translation functions as a metaphor for the transmission of Holocaust testimony and broadens the parameters of survivor testimony. The first book to study Levi and translation, Arduous Tasks overcomes the conventional views of the separation between his own personal memoirs and his translations by stressing the centrality of translation in Levi's entire corpus. Examining not only



the testimonial nature of his work, Insana also discusses the transgressive and performative aspects of transmission in his writings. Arduous Tasks is a superb and innovative study on the importance of translation not only to Levi, but also to Holocaust studies in general.