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December 21, 2007
Grazia Deledda, translated by Jan Kozma, '68, MA'70, PhD'73
Marianna Sirca, Farlieigh Dickinson University Press, 20006
The book: Jan Kozma's translation of "Marianna Sirca" is the near-literal rendering of a novel written by Grazia Deledda (1871-1936), the celebrated Italian author from Sardinia who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926. Almost all of Deledda's stories treat the lives, loves, tragedies, and triumphs of the author's native land - the remote, isolated, and often forbidding island of Sardinia.
This new translation includes an introduction that highlights the salient episodes of Grazia Deledda's life and which situates "Marianna Sirca" both literarily within the author's opera omnia and as part of the general literary trends of the early European twentieth century. Jan Kozma presents the homonymous protagonist, Marianna Sirca, as one of the great literary precursors of the liberated, independent, modern woman - an ironic twist, given the repressive culture in which Marianna lives. The translator also provides numerous explanatory foot-notes that elucidate particular arcane aspects of Sardinian life in the late nineteenth century.
The author: Jan Kozma is professor of Italian at The University of Kansas where she has taught since 1977. She has published other works and also has translated other works written by Grazia Deledda. Kozma is the recipient of the Mortar Board Award, the Cramer Award, and the Kemper Foundation Fellowship for teaching research excellence. In 1978, she was named "Cavaliere," Knight of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in recognition of her academic contributions in the area of Italian language and literature.
Posted by tobiaslw at December 21, 2007 02:24 PM