Edmund Spenser, La Regina delle Fate, ed. and trans. by Luca Manini, Milano: Bompiani, 2012. ISBN: 8845272060

Almost two centuries after the publication in Naples of the first Italian translation of Book I (Mathias, Il Cavalliero della Croce Rossa, 1826) and sixty-two years from the last (C. Izzo, Florence: Sansoni, 1950), the long-awaited Italian version of the whole poem finally hits the bookstore.

This fine bilingual edition includes an introduction by Thomas P. Roche, Jr. and a rich critical apparatus by Luca Manini. Spenser’s text is reproduced from Roche’s Penguin edition of 1978 and Manini’s translation is in the form of prose versions of single stanzas.

Two reviews, one by an English speaking scholar the other by an Italian, are forthcoming in the Fall, 2013 issue of The Spenser Review.

The translation has already received a full review by the literary critic Emanuele Trevi in the Italian national press (in the widely circulated Corriere della Sera, 15 December 2012). Trevi’s article has been given almost a full page, and a large colour reproduction of a painting by Sir John Everett Millais featuring Sir Isumbras, though a peculiar choice of subject, does attract the reader’s attention. The article praises Manini’s effort and emphasizes the challenges faced by the translator of a poem which is celebrated by Trevi as one of the greatest literary works ever.

--Paola Baseotto