National Cultures and Foreign Narratives in Italy, 1903–1943 by Francesca Billiani

Author:Francesca Billiani
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030541507
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

4.2 Propaganda and Xenophilia, Real or Imagined

The extensive publication of translations of foreign fiction raised controversy. Officially condemned as dangerous in aesthetic and political terms, their potential to positively or negatively influence the construction of the Italian literary and national character was not to be ignored. These were the years in which the regime established the grammar of its cults and its cultural mythology through propaganda, and ample space was given to the symbolic representation of the myth of the nation and national character. Specifically, from 1927 onwards, there was a shift in the propaganda strategy from ‘agitation to integration’; to more indirect means, a subtle ‘facistization’ of everyday life.16 The great success of ‘foreign’ epics and historical novels can be considered an example, as in 1935:Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis, Wallace’s Ben Hur, Bulwer Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii, to name but a few, confirm that the public still want stories that transport them away from the worries of everyday life to the great epochs of human history and enable them to relive the passions, characters and events of a grandiose past. (AS, file Agenzia Letteraria Internazionale, March 25 1935, Angelo Treves to Sonzogno, Milan, typewritten)

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