The Translations of James Joyce’s The Cat and the Devil in Italy

This article sets out to explore the dynamics through which Joyce’s version of the legend of the “devil’s bridge”, narrated in a letter addressed to his grandson, Stevie, entered the world of children’s literature in Italy. This occurred just after the legend’s publication in the USA and the UK under the title The Cat and the Devil. It was immediately turned into a picturebook, a sophisticated literary product aimed at very young readers. In fact, far from being a mere text for toddlers, the Italian Il gatto e il diavolo is at the centre of several intersemiotic and interlinguistic translations that enhance the interpretative potential and richness of Joyce’s narration, already at the crossroads between folkloric and modernist translation. The comparative analysis of three different Italian translations of the story expressly addressed to children (the first by Enzo Siciliano, published by Emme Edizioni in 1967; the second by Giulio Lughi for Edizioni EL in 1980; and the third and more recent one by Ottavio Fatica for ESG in 2010) has highlighted that the differences between them can be ascribed to distinct translation projects, aimed at building bridges between young readers and Joyce’s work in various periods of the history of the Italian literary market for children.

The aim of the text is to present the educational potential of selected books by Iwona Chmielewska - a Polish artist, illustrator, graphic artist. The attention was paid to the content of selected works by the author, which can be treated as tools conducive to work on the development of readers’ imagination and empathy. By analyzing the entire architecture of selected picture books by Chmielewska, they can be seen as an unlimited field that can be used to design „educational opportunities”. The text is an idea of going out to children with an art book, an encouragement to look for others with a similar wealth of metaphors and symbols, so that this type of literature becomes the subject of various forms of school and extracurricular education. The text is structured as follows: explain the meaning of the term picture book; emphasizing the importance of picturebooks in contemporary culture; an attempt to define the characteristic style of Iwona Chmielewska’s books; consider the importance of empathy and imagination for the cultural sensitization of the reader; presenting proposals for educational activities inspired by the books by Iwona Chmielewska. The content analysis method used in the methodology of qualitative research was used.