Rodari’s image for the specialised public

157

public, in consideration of the large number of reviews (aimed at lay and/or specialised readers) it received from different magazines.

Section 3.3 analyses other epitextual sources aimed at the specialised public to show how the image of Rodari was outlined for the English-speaking public.

158

Rodari may be justified by the purpose of the Companion as stated by its authors Carpenter and Prichard, a purpose that changed as they were composing the book. They initially intended “to mention only such non-English-language children’s literature as had, in translation, been entirely assimilated into English-language publishing then, however, we saw a need for more extensive articles on foreign children’s books” (1984:

viii) which saw the appearance of Gianni Rodari. He is considered here as “[O]ne of the few authors to have any reputation outside his own country” (1984: 272), but no other information is given about his reputation in English-speaking countries.

A more structured and rationalised collection of sources that included a long and detailed presentation of Gianni Rodari from the point of view of biographical information, author’s commentaries, and Rodari’s body of work commentaries was provided by the 1991 Children’s Literature Review edited by Gerard J. Senick²⁰². This source collects information on writers and illustrators for children and young adults from all over the world. The biographical section was the first to provide specialised readers with the information about Rodari’s militancy in the Communist Party, an element that in the peritextual material of his books had never been mentioned to the lay public²⁰³. The text indicates that “[A]lthough most of Rodari’s books are as yet untranslated, they have received coverage in English-language publications.” (1991: 201) Only three works are mentioned (Telephone Tales, A Pie in the Sky, and Tales Told by a Machine)

202 The collection was published by Gale publishing, founded by Frederick Gale Ruffner in 1954 in Detroit, MI. The declared objective of the publisher was to circulate information among specialists (namely universities and businesses) and libraries, as at the time there no library network existed that gathered and distributed knowledge in specialised fields. In 2007 Gale joined Cengage Learning to expand this network.

203 This component of Rodari’s life was considered by Giulia Massini (2011) as one of the reasons why Rodari was not further diffused in the UK. The other reason was that the UK already had a strong tradition of children’s literature that did not need to be enriched by translating foreign authors (Massini, 2011: 77).

Jack Zipes (2002) also agrees with the first reason for the lack of translations in the US market: “[…] la sua [di Rodari] ideologia era profondamente comunista, ma non nel senso stretto. Tutto ciò non era facilmente accettato dagli editori americani che si dimostravano piuttosto conservatori.” (2002: 88) (“his [Rodari’s] ideology was deeply Communist, but not in a strict sense. This was not positively accepted by American publishers who were generally conservative.” My translation).

159

completely omitting the rest of Rodari’s works published in the UK as well his translators.

The General Commentary on Rodari’s Italian body of work is presented through reviews in English by Carla Poesio and Lucia Binder in the specialised journal Bookbird²⁰⁴ respectively in 1968 and 1980 (Senick, 1991). The purpose of the first was to introduce the poetics of Rodari to the public of specialists in the field of children’s literature; the aim of the second was to provide a retrospective overview of Rodari’s works to celebrate the importance of his role as a writer for children in Italy on the year of his death. Coherently with these two different purposes, only Binder approached the topic of translation:

[T]heir [Rodari’s stories] themes and subjects predestine Gianni Rodari’s books for translation, but his subtle use of language makes it difficult. His writing style is simple and straightforward, but he loved to play with words and expressions. In fact, he often invented his own words, which have very lucid meanings but which also call for a translator who is as inventive and creative with language as the author. (Binder quoted in Senick, 1991: 205)

She seems to suggest that Rodari’s works are suitable for translation in terms of themes, but his linguistic creativity hinders the process unless an equally “inventive and creative” translator is selected to carry out the task. Binder concludes her article with a bibliography or Rodari’s works that accounts for the different languages in which those works were translated, but the list is inaccurate. According to Binder’s research, Le avventure di Cipollino, Favole al telefono, Gip nel televisore were translated into English. In fact, only Favole al telefono became Telephone Tales, the other two never entered the English-speaking world and Binder seems unaware of the existence of another four books translated by Creagh and Newson-Smith.

204 The official refereed journal published quarterly by IBBY, the International Board of Books for Young People.

160

The last section in Children’s Literature Review on Rodari was the Title Commentary, which collected selected reviews on his works in English translation, all of which have been dealt with as epitextual material to reveal the presence of the translator and shape the English voice of Rodari in 3.1.1 to 3.1.5.

In 2004, the encyclopaedia Contemporary Authors Online, again distributed by Gale publishing, provided an entry on Gianni Rodari. It is divided in a short section with biographical information on Rodari, his career and awards; Writings by the author;

Sidelights, a summary on Rodari’s body of work in English translation; and lastly Further readings on the author that mainly refer to other encyclopaedias including Children’s Literature Review. Rodari’s work for leftist parties deserved a brief mention in the biographical section, whereas in Writings by the author there curiously appears a mixture of Rodari’s works in English translation and in the original Italian. For example, Favole al telefono is presented as “(title means “Telephone Tales”)” with 1965 as the publishing year, which actually refers to the UK translation and not to the original. On the contrary, The Befana’s Toyshop, Tales Told by a Machine²⁰⁵, and The Grammar of Fantasy appear with the English title, where only the last has an indication of the translator Jack Zipes. Rodari’s body of work in English in Sidelights illustrates the content of each book. Once again, this section is inaccurate: firstly the editor mentions that “[S]everal of Rodari’s books have proven popular in English translation”

before mentioning all the books translated in the UK from 1965 to 1976 excluding Mr.

Cat in Business²⁰⁶, secondly he describes A Pie in the Sky with its original title La torta in cielo. Not so for the other books, all described with their English title and reviewed following the sources selected in Children’s Literature Review edited by Gale in 1991, which is mentioned as further useful reading on Rodari.

Finally, the last source that added some more information to the image of Gianni Rodari in specialised sources is the 2006 Oxford Encyclopaedia of Children’s

205 This book is presented as published by Abelard-Schuman in New York in 1976. An archival online research on WorldCat did not retrieve any result about this edition printed in the US.

206 This book disappeared from the list in Contemporary Authors Online.

161

Literature edited by Jack Zipes. A long and detailed biographical section compiled by Ann Lawson Lucas (Lucas, 2006a)²⁰⁷ presents Rodari from the year he started his career as a journalist in post-war Italy in 1947 up to C’era due volte il barone Lamberto, the last novel he published before his death in 1980. A large section of this description is dedicated to his works, and all the books that appeared in English translation were named with their original title followed by the English with the publication year in brackets. Even in this section, not all the books in English were mentioned, The Befana’s Toyshop and Tales Told by a Machine were omitted. A short paragraph is dedicated to La grammatica della fantasia, presented as “an extraordinary book for parents and teachers”, almost an advertisement to invite the adult readers of the encyclopaedia to look for the English translation. In the Bibliography, among books in Italian dedicated to Rodari, appears The Grammar of Fantasy with an indication of the translator Jack Zipes. There is no bibliography on the body of work by Rodari, and the other translators that worked on Rodari’s books for the English-speaking public disappeared.

To conclude this section dedicated to the refracted image of Rodari for the specialised public, it can be said that an overview on the information available on this Italian author for children improves in terms of biography, but in some cases lacks precision regarding his body of work in translation. All the sources were in English, which means that whenever translation was mentioned it was for an English-speaking public without reference to translations in other languages. From the first article by Bell, more details resurfaced on the pivotal social, political and educational role that Rodari played in post-war Italy, thus offering a wider perspective on the “original context” of production of his works in relation with other Italian authors for children in the same period. The publishers that collected and distributed the information on Rodari were distributed both in the UK and the US. The Gale edition of 1991 seems to be the

207 Lucas also wrote an essay on The Befana’s Toyshop and its distribution on the UK market (a fuller discussion is in section 3.1.2 of the present research).

162

most accurate as it provided readers with different points of view on Rodari from various actors in the field of children’s literature including Italian scholars such as Poesio and Pino Boero. The most inaccurate source was the 2004 edition of Contemporary Authors Online because the works by Rodari were presented as a mixture of original works and translations in English, and the description of Rodari’s works is a patchwork of comments selected from the 1991 Children’s Literature Review again published by Gale.

With regard to translation, none of these sources mentioned Patrick Creagh or Sue Newson-Smith for the UK editions of Rodari’s works. On the contrary, Jack Zipes is named every time The Grammar of Fantasy appears in the text.