Older Scots poetry in Italian translation

Bianchin, Ruggero (2025) Older Scots poetry in Italian translation. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

This thesis discusses Italian translation of poetry written in Older Scots, a historical Germanic language related to English and spoken in large parts of Scotland until the seventeenth century. It has a bipartite objective.

Firstly, it assesses critically, for the first time, all traceable published translations of Older Scots poetry into Italian, bringing together within one single study different translations that were published at different times for different publishers and different audiences. By adopting and expanding Maria Vittoria Molinari’s translator-philologist (TP) approach (Molinari 2002), the thesis integrates analytical techniques drawn from Translation Studies within the broader philological analysis which underpins this study to examine the strategies adopted by translators. It thereby delineates and assesses the rationale behind, and the function of, the target texts within the discrete communicative specificities of the sociocultural and editorial contexts in which they were published.

Secondly, mapping to the main points emerging from the analysis of the published poems in the first half of the thesis, it will show through illustrative examples how a TP approach can be adopted to produce translations of Older Scots poems that have never been translated before in Italian. The TP approach disputes that translators of medieval literature should adopt one single edition as their unique source text. Rather, the second half of the thesis illustrates how to engage critically with both manuscript and print sources of the published translations, arguing that readers should be made aware of medieval literature’s textual ‘instability’ – meaning the frequent impossibility to establish an archetypal version of the text as it may have been originally conceived and transmitted.

By clearly demarcating the texts discussed herein as translations of literature written in Older Scots, the thesis seeks to advance much-needed recognition for Older Scots language and literature as a distinct yet contiguous entity to English/Middle English studies within an italophone academic context. Through this, it aims to promote wider awareness of the unique development of the Scots language. This action is urgently needed, given that Scots is now officially recognised as a minority language at risk of disappearing – and that its history, both within and beyond Scotland, is barely known.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Subjects: P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Language and Linguistics
• Supervisor's Name: Kopaczyk, Professor Joanna and De Francisci, Dr. Enza
• Date of Award: 2025
• Depositing User: Theses Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2025-85600
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 19 Nov 2025 10:49
• Last Modified: 19 Nov 2025 12:00
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.85600
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/85600