Literature & Literary Studies

ABBA ABBA: By Anthony Burgess

by Paul Howard, Andrew Biswell

Description

ABBA ABBA 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. 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.

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Reviews

Students of the sonnet will know that the first eight lines of the Petrarchan form rhyme according to the pattern abba abba. A title is only a name, however. The book itself is about two poets who may or may not have met in Rome in 1820-1. 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.

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Bibliographic Information

  • Publisher Manchester University Press
  • Publication Date February 2019
  • Orginal LanguageEnglish
  • ISBN/Identifier 9781526138033 / 1526138034
  • Publication Country or regionUnited Kingdom
  • ReadershipGeneral/trade
  • Publish StatusPublished
  • Dimensions216 X 138 mm
  • SeriesThe Irwell Edition of the Works of Anthony Burgess
  • Reference Code11477

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