“My dear Stevie, from Nonno”: translations and illustrations of a Joycean verbal text for young readers

Abstract

James Joyce (1882-1941) was one of the most revolutionary and influential modernist writers, both inside and outside English-speaking literature. Notoriously, the author did not write for children, but a letter sent to his grandson, Stephen James Joyce (1932-2020), and published for the first time in 1957, was entitled The Cat and the Devil and released as a children's book. The translations of this letter, made into more than twenty languages over the last 60 years, bring themes and elements of Joycean writing, while reveal themselves as products of their own time and society. From this perspective, this article sought to analyse the illustrations and translations of The Cat and the Devil from the perspective of intersemiotic reading by young readers. The results of the research point to the translations of the work as transitions between semiotic systems, in creative and interpretative acts of appropriation and redemption by both the translator and the illustrator. The semiotic/semantic potential present in the multimodality of the picture book was evidenced in terms of the possibilities for exploring and engaging young readers, expanding the single addressee of the original letter and transforming it into a significant work of children's literature.