Dopo il divorzio by Grazia Deledda: reception, rewriting, retranslation

This paper focuses on the case study of Grazia Deledda’s Dopo il divorzio (1902) through the prism, on the one hand, of the rewriting of the text in Italian (Naufraghi in porto, 1920), its paratextual Italian rewriting in 1955 (when the author had already passed away), on the other hand, of its Spanish translation in 1914 and retranslation in 1955. This case study raises a number of questions that may be of interest for the theoretical debate on retranslation and reception: if changes to social context trigger the rewriting of a novel, can this rewriting be considered a form of translation? Should the proposal of a new paratext be regarded as a form of rewriting or retranslation? Can revision and plagiarism be considered a form of retranslation once the socio-political and cultural landscapes have significantly changed?