A lecture by MARK DAVIE to mark the 450th anniversary of the birth of GALILEO GALILEI
On the occasion of the XIV Settimana della Lingua Italiana nel Mondothe Italian Institute of Culture in partnership with Trinity College Dublin and University College Corkis pleased to presentMessages from the stars: on translating Galileo’s Italian.Conference (in english) by Mark Davie, University of ExeterMonday 20.10.20146:15pm Trinity College DublinThe Long Room HubTuesday 21.10.2014 6:00pm University College Cork Boole 2In 1610 Galileo published an account of his astronomical observations with the newly invented telescope, in a short book entitled Sidereus nuncius (‘message from the stars’). Written in Latin, the international language of scholarship, the book was an immediate best-seller and established Galileo’s reputation in the forefront of European thinkers.Mark Davie’s presentation will examine Galileo’s reasons for abandoning Latin in favour of the vernacular, the qualities he aimed to cultivate in his Italian writing and the challenges his prose presents to a translator into modern English.Mark Davie has taught Italian in the universities of Liverpool and Exeter and has published on a range of Italian authors, mainly in the period from Dante to the Renaissance. He is particularly interested in the relations between Italian and Latin, and between vernacular and humanistic culture, in the Renaissance. He is the translator, with William R. Shea, of Galileo’s Selected Writings (Oxford World’s Classics, 2012).