Montale's "Mestiere Vile": The Elective Translations from English in the 1930s and 1940s

This book examines Montale's (uncommissioned) translations from English during a period in which translation was widely seen as a way (often in covert protest against fascism) to break out of a narrow and ossified literary tradition. Montale's own work is seen as an appropriation of a foreign (Anglo-American) tradition in the interests of exploring new poetic possibilities in Italian.