OPEN LECTURE
Clorinda Donato, California State University Long Beach
Translating Transgender in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Catterina Vizzani/Giovanni Bordoni in German
31 MAY 18.00 (CET) SWEDISH INSTITUTE AND ON ZOOM (LINK BELOW)
The life story of Catterina Vizzani (1719-1743), the Italian woman who transitioned to male to become Giovanni Bordoni, was first told in a 29-page novella whose title, Breve storia di Catterina Vizzani, or Brief History of Catterina Vizzani, was published in 1744 by Rimini anatomist Giovanni Bianchi. The story achieved its notoriety, and something of the status of a classic on representations of transgender, thanks to John Cleland’s sensationalized translation of the text into English in 1751. In 1755 a German translation was published in the Allegemeines Magazin der Natur, Kunst und Wissenschaften, a German periodical on nature, art, and science, where it circulated widely, juxtaposed with a number of other short texts classified under the same rubric. The German translation presents a new set of cultural reflections on gender, in particular transgender, with the many intertextualities that exist between this German text, Cleland’s translation, Bianchi’s original and cases of transgender in the German States. Criticized by their readers for publishing such a “schmutzige Geschichte” or “dirty story,” the editors’ response offers a rare opportunity to observe the reciprocity, transmission, and circulation of knowledge about transgender in eighteenth-century Europe.
Clorinda Donato is Professor of Italian and French at California State University, Long Beach, and Director of the Clorinda Donato Center for Global Romance Languages and Translation Studies. Her book The Life and Legend of Catterina Vizzani. Sexual Identity, Science and Sensationalism in Eighteenth-Century Italy and England, was published in 2020 by Liverpool University Press.
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