Reforegnising the Foreign: The Italian Retranslation of James Joyce’s Ulysses

The paper explores the notion of re-foreignization – i.e. the restoration of a literary work that was not intended to be mainstream, but has in time become a classic, to its original foreignness. This notion is explored with specific reference to the new Italian translation of James Joyce‘s Ulysses, which is meant for a recipient culture that differs not only geogra-phically, but also diachronically, from the culture the original was intended for. The Italian translation we focus on was recently completed by Enrico Terrinoni in collaboration with Carlo Bigazzi, and at the time of writing is the only full retranslation of the book after the one by Giulio De Angelis (1960). Our paper is divided into two parts: in the first one we discuss the notion of retranslation and the problems connected with it. In the second part we present several specific examples of how the foreignizing potential of Ulysses was brought to life again in Terrinoni‘s translation.