Abstract
The goal of this thesis is to provide a detailed analysis of Pietro Di Donato's Christ in Concrete (1939) and a comparison between the novel and its Italian version, written by Bruno Maffi and Eva Kuhn Amendola. The translation, entitled Cristo fra i Muratori, was published in Italy in 1941. The analysis is preceded by an overview of the main events that characterized the history of Italians in America and of the most representative phases of Italian American literature, in order to contextualize the author and his book. Furthermore, this work highlights how the themes of the novel and Di Donato's innovative use of an English that imitates the structures and rhythms of the migrants' way of speaking contributed to make Christ in Concrete the archetype of the Italian American work of literature.
The comparative analysis of the source text and the target text focuses on how the translators dealt with the most tricky passages. Despite the presence of numerous intratextual and extratextual constraints, what emerges from the comparison is Bruno Maffi and Eva Amendola's ability to preserve the original style and the linguistic heterogeneity of Pietro Di Donato's novel, notwithstanding some inevitable loss.
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