This paper was given as part of the Magazine and World Literature Webinar Series.

Abstract:

In this paper, I take an historiographical approach to look at some key debates on world literatures and on foreign artistic traditions (chiefly architecture), which played out in literary and cultural magazines during the Italian Fascist dictatorship. I show how, by hosting such debates, 1920s-1930s literary and cultural magazines seemingly randomly contributed to shaping the cultural politics of a xenophobic cultural apparatus in relation to the arts. I focus on journals of different size, political orientations and visibility to provide a comprehensive analytical perspective. Finally, by analysing the experience of world literature magazines create in its many different versions, I question what might constitute national and canonical literature in order to demonstrate how such concepts have to be closely connected with each other, especially when functioning as a political tool.