Arduous Tasks : : Primo Levi, Translation and the Transmission of Holocaust Testimony / / Lina N Insana.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter UTP eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2015
• VerfasserIn: Insana, Lina N,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2016]; ©2009
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

One of twentieth-century Italy's greatest thinkers, Primo Levi (1919-1987) started reflecting on the Holocaust almost immediately after his return home from the year he survived in Auschwitz. Levi's powerful Holocaust testimonials reveal his preoccupation with processes of translation, in the form of both embedded and book-length renderings of texts relevant to Holocaust survival. In Arduous Tasks, Lina N. Insana demonstrates how translation functions as a metaphor for the transmission of Holocaust testimony and broadens the parameters of survivor testimony. The first book to study Levi and translation, Arduous Tasks overcomes the conventional views of the separation between his own personal memoirs and his translations by stressing the centrality of translation in Levi's entire corpus. Examining not only the testimonial nature of his work, Insana also discusses the transgressive and performative aspects of transmission in his writings. Arduous Tasks is a superb and innovative study on the importance of translation not only to Levi, but also to Holocaust studies in general.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface: Points of Entry -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction: Translation Matters -- 1. Transmission: The Witness as Translator -- 2. Source Texts and Subtexts: Translation and the Grey Zone -- 3. Transgression: Translation and Levi's 'Trapassar del segno' -- 4. Infinite Transaction: Testimonial Numismatics and the Narrative Exchange -- 5. Palinodic Reversal: The Trials of Translation -- Conclusion: The Witness's Tape Recorder and the Violence of Mediation -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Index of Primo Levi's works