ABSTRACT
Modern scholars generally agree in identifying the Romantic era as the legitimate precursor to twentieth-century translation studies, as it was during this period that an unprecedented revaluation of the notion of fidelity, alongside a new sense of responsibility towards the original text, was rediscovered, igniting the debate on the purpose of translation itself. The theories developed by the early German Romantics of the Athenaum circle, including, besides Schleiermacher, the likes of the Schlegel brothers, Novalis and Ludwig Tieck, were especially important in that their emphasis on preserving the original led subsequently to a revaluation of its form and style. In Italy, Melchiorre Cesarotti, widely renowned for his translations of Ossian, considered the French philosopher's observations as fully in line with his personal views on translation. In truth, Cesarotti's contribution to translation theories was remarkable, emerging as a product of Enlightenment principles, and later came to reunite traditionalist and progressive trends.
