This dissertation addresses the area of Translation and Humour Studies where the two disciplines overlap. My main original contribution is an Epistemic Approach to the translation process that focuses on the role that knowledge plays in the process of producing, reading and translating a written fictional text. Moreover, I propose a model for the description of the process of translation, tools to identify and evaluate items of verbally expressed humour, and a methodology to classify their renderings in translation.The study investigates the Italian translations of the works by the English humorist P. G. Wodehouse. It is based on a vast primary literature (87 books) translated into Italian (176 translations and 579 editions) for which I collected metadata, available for research in the form of an Excel spreadsheet. In the light of the Epistemic Approach, this work analyses and describes texts from the translations commissioned by 16Italian publishers to 63 translators from 1928 to 2017.After an introductory chapter where I present my model of text activation and the Epistemic Approach to translation, the project begins with a presentation of the data I collected and an exposition of the complex publishing history of Wodehouse's works in Italy. In the second chapter, I identify a definition of style suitable for both quantitative and qualitative interdisciplinary empirical research and apply it to systematically describe Wodehouse's style. The third chapter presents the main theories developed in Humour Studies, the key concepts I identified to describe Wodehouse's humour and the tools I developed to assess it. Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 show the results of the analyses I performed on numerous Italian translations and retranslations. I conclude by presenting the contributions that my approach and my findings offer to the disciplines of Translation and Humour Studies and possible future developments.iii

RiassuntoLa ricerca sull'umorismo in ambito traduttologico richiede strumenti in grado di coglierne la complessa natura. Viene qui presentato l'approccio epistemico, uno strumento espressamente concepito per l'analisi delle istanze umoristiche presenti nei testi narrativi scritti. Questo approccio prende in considerazione il ruolo svolto dalla conoscenza, tanto linguistica quanto del mondo, nel processo creativo e traduttivo. Esso consente sia al traduttore che al ricercatore di riconoscere la funzione degli artifici stilistici utilizzati per produrre l'effetto umoristico e di guidarne e valutarne la resa in traduzione. L'aspetto stilistico analizzato in questo studio è l'intertestualità nelle opere dello scrittore umoristico P.G. Wodehouse. Il suo trattamento in traduzione viene analizzato per mezzo di un caso di studio che confronta le 5 traduzioni italiane dello stesso romanzo, pubblicate tra il 1931 e il 1994. Abstract"Analysis of the treatment of intertextuality in the Italian translations of the works by P.G. Wodehouse (1881Wodehouse ( -1975 in the light of the epistemic approach" Research on Humour and Translation studies requires instruments capable to appreciate their complex nature. We present here the epistemic approach, a tool especially devised to analyse the translation of humour instances in written fictional text. This approach focuses on the role knowledge plays in creative production and in the process of translating, allowing both translators and researchers to recognize the functions

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