Insights into Religious Satire and Blasphemous Translations
摘要
Reflecting on religion and spirituality is a major topic in underground comix, in terms of satirical provocation and harsh criticism of manipulation and control exercised through faith, as well as in terms of a personal spiritual quest on the part of some underground authors. This chapter first explores why most works and authors (e.g., Justin Green, Frank Stack, Jack Jackson) dealing with this potentially problematic theme are disregarded in Italy. Italian mainstream publishers avoided religious satire. Conversely, underground publishers used comix to display their own anti-clericalism and mainly focused on overtly blasphemous stories (e.g., S. Clay Wilson). In a number of cases (e.g., in Robert Crumb’s and Gilbert Shelton’s comix) translators even increased the level of verbal violence by adding blasphemous contents and isotopies that were absent in the source texts. By disentangling the reasons for such translation choices, the study of blasphemous translations reveals unexplored facets of the Italian culture of the time.