Abstract
The present chapter focuses on the concept of primitiveness and its representation in two novels: The Inheritors (1955) by William Golding, and The Evolution Man, Or, How I Ate my Father (1960) by Roy Lewis. Two texts with different purposes: the first, featuring the downfall of the Neanderthal man, symbol of pristine innocence, at the hands of the more aggressive homo sapiens; the second, a less well-known novel by the British journalist Roy Lewis, attains a clearly satirical, and almost surreal goal. Both try to translate 'primitive', prelinguistic language into a code more accessible to the reader, and the re-translation of these texts into Italian by Giorgio Monicelli (Golding) and Carlo Brera (Lewis) is a further transposing effort which sometimes misses the mark, or, quite inadvertently, opens new avenues of interpretation. Both books, and their translations, illustrate two contrasting ideas of 'otherness' that help us reflect on the taboo-word 'primitive' and its surreptitious presence in today's social and political life.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Spazi e tempi dell'alterità |
| Editors | Daniele Gallo, Ellen Patat, Daniela Bombara |
| Place of Publication | Mantova Italy |
| Publisher | Universitas Studiorum S.r.l., Mantua, Italy |
| Pages | 507-527 |
| Number of pages | 21 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9788833691367 |
| Publication status | Published - 2022 |