Translation, Adaptation and Appropriation in Eighteenth-Century Venice: Pamela and her Successors

During a period in Venice of rapid expansion of the culture industries and in particular the print media in the eighteenth century, adaptations were rife. The source texts were usually works published in England and France. Alongside the translations that were adapted for a Venetian audience, many involved a transition across genres, thus creating multiple versions of the same source text. This essay takes a novel that was turned into play-scripts and librettos to consider what these reveal about the contexts in which they were written.