A more democratic Ulisse

by Enrico Terrinoni

Based on his recent Italian translation of the book, in this article the author offers a new reading of one of the benchmarks of modernist literature, James Joyce’s Ulysses, in a more democratic, pluralistic light with a focus on semantic ambiguity. The analysis compares certain extracts with other versions of the same text, and in particular, with the most familiar and longstanding Italian translation of Joyce’s masterpiece. The comparison mainly focuses on the possibility of tackling authority principles in the light of the urgent need for ‘open’, ‘changing’ and ‘plural’ translations – all aimed at constructing a hermeneutic in progress, inspired by the heteroglossia of the original work.