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>> Fifteen Reasons
for John Florio,
The Man Who Invented Shakespeare
>> Quindici Ragioni
per John Florio,
L’uomo che ha
inventato Shakespeare
>> Florio As Seen By Scholars : 1921-2007
>> Chapter 7: (excerpt)
The Translation of Montaigne’s Essais
>> Chapter 8: (excerpt)
Language, Style,
And Euphuism
>> Chapter 17: (excerpt)
The Spirit and The Land
of Italy
>> L’Italia e Florio
>> John Florio
and His Entourage
>> The Testament
of John Florio
>> Florio’s works
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Florio - Shakespeare
Florio as seen by scholars: 1921-2007
Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World, 2004.
Born in London, the son of Protestant refugees from Italy, Florio had already published several language manuals, along with a compendium of six thousand Italian proverbs; he would go on to produce an important Italian-English dictionary and a vigorous translation, much used by Shakespeare, of Montaigne’s Essays. Florio became a friend of Ben Jonson, and there is evidence that already in the early 1590s he was a man highly familiar with the theater. (p. 227)
Keir Elam, ‘At the cubiculo’: Shakespeare’s Problems with Italian Language and Culture”, in Italian Culture in the Drama of Shakespeare & his Contemporaries, edited by Michele Marrapodi, 2007.
Florio provides not only the venues but some of the actual dialogic material that Shakespeare employs in his representations of Italy in The Shrew and in later comedies, thereby rendering superfluous any mere physical journey to the peninsula. Shakespeare’s explorations of Italy, its language and culture begin and end within – altough they are certainly not limited to – the confines of Florio’s texts. (p.100)
Longworth Chambrun, Giovanni Florio. Un apôtre de la Renaissance en Angleterre à l'époque de Shakespeare, 1921.
Le lecteur constatera que le poète anglais et le grammairien italien employaient les mêmes tournures, presque les mêmes phrases, quand ils s'adressaient à leur protecteur commun, Southampton. (p. 103)
Le voisinage du grammarien et son influence indirecte sur le dramaturge suffit à expliquer bien des mystères, et rend inutile les théories baconiennes ou autres de ceux qui s'obstinent à croire que ce n'est pas le "Stratfordien" qui a écrit Shakespeare. Qu'on ne m'accuse pas de vouloir remplacer Bacon, Rutland ou le sixième comte de Derby, par Florio. Les travaux de ce dernier fournissent par eux-mêmes l'évidence que le grammairien était incapable de produire une oeuvre dramatique de quelque envolée.
(p. 179)
Michael Wyatt, The Italian encounter with Tudor England: a cultural politics of translation, 2005
John Willinsky has demonstrated Florio's importance as a source for some 3,843 English words in the second edition of the OED. Of these, Florio is responsible for the earliest appearances of 1,149 words (…),
(…) first Chaucer with 2012 earliest appearances, second Shakespeare with 1969 and third John Florio with 1149.
These statistics provide a striking picture of the manner in which Florio's work both registered and contributed to the development of English, a further indication of the multi-directional consequences of his philological stewardship. (pp.230-231)
Frances A. Yates, John Florio. The life of an Italian in Shakespeare's England, 1934.
The number, variety and picturesqueness of the English equivalents which Florio manages to collect for each Italian word are remarkable. This task brought home to him the wealth of English (...) The collection of so many English equivalents for each word must have involved at least as wide a reading in English as in Italian. To have found time in a busy life of teaching for such a vast and valuable work predicates in Florio an unwearying industry and an absolutely genuine devotion to letters. (p.190)
It is very probable that Shakespeare had sometimes occasion to study this dictionary. (p. 268)
Clearly Florio's Italian lessons were designed, not only to teach Italian, but also to lead up to a refinement, a polish, an elaboration in the learner's English style. (pp. 40-41)
One is again and again reminded that Florio was Shakespeare's contemporary and that they had the taste for words in common. (…) The way is now clear for an entirely fresh consideration of the whole problem of Florio's relations with Shakespeare. This book, which is dedicated to the impartial consideration of the facts of Florio's life, is not the place for such a study, which must contain some controversial elements, but the following is a brief outline of an argument which I hope to develop at length elsewhere. (pp. 334-36)
Manfred Pfister, Inglese Italianato- Italiano Anglizzato: John Florio in Renaissance Go-Betweens. Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe edited, 2005.
Translators, if they work on a certain level, translate from a foreign language into their own. With Florio, the reverse is true – or, rather, the rule does not apply, as with him the difference between own and foreign language becomes uncertain or collapses altogether. This is a measure of his linguistic and cultural in-betweenness [...] it is also quite impossible to decide, from which of the two languages he translated into the other […] which is the original and which the translation.( p. 48)
André Koszul, L'offrande d'un traducteur, in Revue Anglo-Américaine, avril 1931.
Mais certes nos listes antérieures montrent aussi, et plus clairement encore, que malgré ces quelques traces d'une discrétion relative, Florio est essentiellement un importateur et un innovateur hardi, hardi souvent jusqu'à la témérité. Bien plutôt qu'à la famille des "puristes" il appartient à cette grande tribu des hommes de la Renaissance qui en tous pays pensaient un peu comme notre Ronsard. "Plus nous aurons de mots en nostre langue, plus elle sera parfaitte." (p.520)
Felix Otto Matthiessen, Translation: an Elizabethan art, 1931.
Florio's greatest gift was the ability to make his book come to life for the Elizabethan imagination. (...) Florio creates a Montaigne who is an actual Elizabethan figure . (p.141)
the Zeitgeist breathed through him (p. 130)
It would be dangerous to press too for the striking similarities (p.162) [between Shakespeare and Florio]
George Coffin Taylor, Shakespere's Debt to Montaigne , 1925
When the number of expressions in Shakspere, and the number of the thoughts in Shakspere, which could never have taken on their final form but for a previous reading of Montaigne,[translated by John Florio] are borne in mind, it may well be asked whether any other single work that Shakspere read influenced him in so many differerent plays and in so great a variety of ways – words, phrases, passages, thoughts. (p.42)
The strong influence in The Tempest is inexplicable, except on the theory that Shakspere returned for a brief interval to his reading of Montaigne. (p.32).
Shakspere was most profoundly and extensively affected by the Florio Montaigne in every way immediately after he had first had the opportunity to become familiar with the work in its entirety, […] Shakspere bore Montaigne's marks upon him to the grave. In what respects did Montaigne affect him? Practically in every respect in which a dramatist would naturally be affected by an essayist.. (p.33). |
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John Florio
The Man Who Was Shakespeare
by Lamberto Tassinari
Giano Books
388 pages
$ 20.00 |
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