Abba Abba: By Anthony Burgess - (Irwell Edition of the Works of Anthony Burgess) by Paul Howard & Andrew Biswell (Hardcover)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>Anthony Burgess's 'hybrid' novel has been out of print in the UK for almost twenty years. Paul Howard's new edition restores the original text and demystifies Burgess's engagement with his Italian and English sources.<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><em>ABBA ABBA</em> is one of Anthony Burgess's most original works, combining fiction, poetry and translation. A product of his time in Italy in the early 1970s, this delightfully unconventional book is part historical novel, part poetry collection, as well as a meditation on translation and the generating of literature by one of Britain's most inventive post-war authors. Set in Papal Rome in the winter of 1820-21, Part One recreates the consumptive John Keats's final months in the Eternal City and imagines his meeting the Roman dialect poet Giuseppe Gioachino Belli. Pitting Anglo-Italian cultures and sensibilities against each other, Burgess creates a context for his highly original versions of 71 sonnets by Belli, which feature in Part Two. <p/>This new edition includes extra material by Burgess, along with an introduction and notes by Paul Howard, Fellow in Italian Literature at Trinity College, Cambridge.<br><p/><br></br><p><b> From the Back Cover </b></p></br></br>Students of the sonnet will know that the first eight lines of the Petrarchan form rhyme according to the pattern <i>abba abba</i>. A title is only a name, however. The book itself is about two poets who may or may not have met in Rome in 1820-21. One was John Keats, who was dying in a house on the Spanish Steps. The other was Giuseppe Gioachino Belli - a great poet, little known outside Rome, since he wrote in the rough, dirty, blasphemous dialect of the Roman streets. The first part of the book is about Keats and Belli. The second part presents Belli himself as poet, translated for the first time into English (as opposed to American and Scottish). If Belli knew Keats, did Keats influence him? If Keats knew Belli, would Keats, if he had lived, have become a sort of English Belli? Hard and unanswerable questions. This book is meant merely to be enjoyable, perhaps touching.<p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br>'Thanks to the informative Introduction and the six Appendices, we now have a fairly complete picture of the evolution of ABBA ABBA and of Burgess' approach to his self-imposed task as a translator. For students of literary translation, however, the most fascinating part of the editorial apparatus will be the detailed notes on the poems themselves.' Translation and Literature<br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br><br><strong>Paul Howard</strong> is Title A Fellow in Italian Literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, and Affiliated Lecturer in Italian at the University of Cambridge<br>
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