This article seeks to reassess in an interdisciplinary perspective the scope and impact of revolutionary theatre by considering the case of one play that, whatever its aesthetic worth, travelled widely and had a long afterlife in translation : Marie-Joseph Chénier’s Fénelon, ou Les Religieuses de Cambrai (1793). We reconstruct both the political role of the play in France and the complex translation history of this text in the Italian language, to investigate why and how it was adapted by three different translators, how its meaning changed in relation to the context in which it was published, republished, or performed, and how writers who were also political figures like Chénier and his Italian translators, Ranza, Raby and Salfi, sought to influence both the course of revolution and the future of theatre through their paratext.
Mannucci, E., Mucignat, R. (2025). The Many Lives of Fénelon. Transformations of a Revolutionary Play in France and Italy. In B. De Groote, L. Jooken, S. Lavaert, G. Rooryck (a cura di), Metamorphoses. Tracing the Translator in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1660-1830 (pp. 141-163). Brepols Publishers.
The Many Lives of Fénelon. Transformations of a Revolutionary Play in France and Italy
Mannucci, EJ
;
2025
Abstract
This article seeks to reassess in an interdisciplinary perspective the scope and impact of revolutionary theatre by considering the case of one play that, whatever its aesthetic worth, travelled widely and had a long afterlife in translation : Marie-Joseph Chénier’s Fénelon, ou Les Religieuses de Cambrai (1793). We reconstruct both the political role of the play in France and the complex translation history of this text in the Italian language, to investigate why and how it was adapted by three different translators, how its meaning changed in relation to the context in which it was published, republished, or performed, and how writers who were also political figures like Chénier and his Italian translators, Ranza, Raby and Salfi, sought to influence both the course of revolution and the future of theatre through their paratext.
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