Decadent CulturemesTranslating Bernard Shaw’sWidowers’ Houses into Italian

!is article discusses my recent Italian translation (2022) of George Bernard Shaw’s first play, Widowers’ Houses (1892), mainly by considering the concept of the cultureme. Culturemes, which are semantic units that exemplify and serve as paradigms of certain cultures, have been employed in translation studies in recent years to see how, and even if, culture-specific concepts can be translated. Culturemes are here seen in the light of the transculturality of decadent poetics, and hence interpreted as possible facilitators in the translation into Italian of Widowers’ Houses, a play written in the decadent period, and developing many features of decadent poetics, whose author utilised key transcultural concepts of the period. Viewing Shaw’s text from the perspective of such decadent culturemes as the slums, Cockney English and other decadent sociolects, and the decadent hero, together with the New Woman, not only substantiate the idea of Shaw as a decadent artist, but also suggest possible translation practices and processes for decadent literatur

Ecological risk assessment for contaminated sites in Italy: Guidelines and path forward

Ecological risk assessment (ERA) is defined as an iterative process that evaluates the likelihood of adverse ecological effects resulting from exposure to one or more stressors. Although ERA is recognized as a valuable procedure to better address efforts and strategies for site remediation, in Europe a common framework for the implementation of ERA in the management of contaminated sites is lacking. In Italy, there are no legally binding provisions regulating the direct assessment of potential likelihood of ecological risks. In this context, the main objective of this article was to develop a guideline to facilitate ERA application in support of an effective and sustainable management of contaminated sites in Italy and to facilitate a multistakeholder dialogue. The work was based on a critical review of existing ERA guidelines in the international context, as well as other regulatory documents and technical approaches dealing with the evaluation of ecological effects of chemical contaminants in different environmental compartments. Approaches and tools available in these documents were then used to prepare a proposed guideline for the Italian context; the proposed ERA guideline is meant to represent a flexible but robust approach that can be useful in evaluating existing data (e.g., from past investigations) as well as in the planning of site-specific investigations. To facilitate the direct application of the ERA procedure, the guideline was prepared including several templates of summary tables, checklists, and examples. The proposed ERA guideline could facilitate the decision-making process for contaminated sites with ecological values, although its application would necessarily require, at least in the initial phase, testing of its suitability to the Italian context and setting-up of a close dialogue and collaboration with local authorities and other stakeholders. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2022;00:1-7. (c) 2022 SETA

“‘Children of Pleasure’: Oscar Wilde and Italian Decadents”

Il capitolo “Children of Pleasure: Oscar Wilde and Italian Decadents” fa parte del volume The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe (Continuum, 2010), a sua volta incluso nel progetto editoriale The Reception of British and Irish Authors in Europe, che ha come General Editor la prof.ssa Elinor Shaffer e, a partire dal 2003, ha prodotto diversi studi nell’ambito dei reception studies. Il saggio indaga la ricezione di Oscar Wilde nella cultura italiana di fine Ottocento e dei primi decenni del Novecento analizzando l’incidenza dello scrittore nelle poetiche di Gabriele D’Annunzio e di figure con le quali D’Annunzio instaurò dialoghi estetici nel corso della sua lunga carriera letteraria (tra gli altri: Giulio Aristide Sartorio, Francesco Paolo Michetti, Angelo Conti, Ugo Ojetti, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Ardengo Soffici, Filippo de Pisis, James Joyce, Emilio Cecchi e Mario Praz). Approfondendo la fortuna che Wilde incontrò presso gli esteti e decadenti italiani, come presso le avanguardie, fino a giungere alle soglie della seconda guerra mondiale, con una particolare attenzione alla complessa risposta che all’opera wildiana si diede nel ventennio fascista, lo studio offre anche un più ampio spaccato delle influenze della cultura tardo-vittoriana e dell’Aesthetic Movement in Italia. Nella parte conclusiva, il saggio riflette sulla riscoperta di Wilde a partire dalla metà degli anni Settanta del Novecento, quando una nuova generazione di anglisti italiani formatisi sulle opere di critici di ascendenza dannunziana, come Cecchi e Praz, pubblicò studi che superavano la critica impressionistica tipica della prima, lunga stagione della ricezione del tardo-vittorianesimo in Italia