The Role of Women in Translation History: Translating and Collaborating in the Re-shaping of Italy in the Early Romantic Period

Translation plays a crucial role in moments of transition, yet its role in the development of new modes of female expression has only recently started to be explored. The key reason for this neglect is the supposedly derivative nature of translation, seen as an activity secondary to original writing. I will argue that the specificity of women’s contribution to translation can prove to be a highly productive source for historical analyses of cultural developments. The focus on gender allows critics to question the definition of translation as a unitary category, effectively bringing to the fore a set of peripheral textual and interpersonal practices. The role played by early nineteenth-century women in the renewal of Italian literature and the introduction of new approaches to translation has not received sufficient attention. In this sense, the introduction of the pedagogical novel—a new genre for the Italian literary panorama—through translations by women is particularly relevant. It is in this context that Bianca Milesi, translator of Maria Edgeworth’s pedagogical writings, emerges as a cultural mediator and bearer of the social and liberal values of Italian Romanticism.