Giovanni Boccaccio’s “Decameron” Translated into Russian: A Review of Russian and non-Russian Studies on the Topic

Introduction. The history of Russian translations of “Decameron”, along with an analysis of their merits and demerits, has been investigated by numerous authors for several years now. Usually, this research focuses on the comparative analysis of translations by A. Veselovsky and N. Lyubimov, published in 1891–1892 and 1970 respectively, as well as K. Batyushkov’s translations, appeared from 1817 onwards, of individual stories from the “Decameron”. The present article analyses modern studies devoted to translations of the original text of the “Decameron” from Italian into Russian. The assumption is that their existence testifies to the unceasing interest of Russian-speaking academics and publishers in a work that was seminal in the emergence of the modern novel and may even lead to considering the creation of a new Russian translation that incorporates the findings of recent analyses. Methodology and sources . The approach used in the literature analysis was comparative analysis of the texts of the original “Decameron” and its Russian translations. Preference was given to studies conducted from linguistic and stylistic points of view. Results and discussion . Belonging to different periods, existing translations also reflect different approaches. According to a survey of the existing literature, both Veselovsky’s literalist translation and the creative translations of Batyushkov and Lyubimov, for all their merits, do not always fully convey the rich textual and semantic background of the original. Conclusion. The analysis concludes by arguing that future research involving a hypothetical new translation of the “Decameron” should focus, among other things, on the ability to convey its metrical structure, a characteristic of Medieval rhetoric.