The Italian Dream. L?Italia e la (para)letteratura contemporanea per il mercato angloamericano
Creators: name: Agnoletti, Giacomo
Publisher: name: Universit� degli studi di Trento
Year: 2020

description: The overall success of the products related to Italy in the economy of the food sector and the one concerning ?luxury? is well renowned, but I believe that, as years go by, even in the economy of the culture (or culture industry) there has been an ongoing process, a phenomenon of similar characteristics, namely:
? The global spread of Italianness (?Italianicity? in Barthes? terms) in mass culture, meant not only as a geographical setting of the works, but also as the presence of characters related to Italy, or as a narrative element, both principal and secondary, or in general as a cultural reference;
? The appropriation of these topics, fascinations, characters, by the global cultural industry, managed mainly by American companies.
The purpose behind this research is to document the phenomenon of diffusion of the Italian dream in the global culture, and investigate the causes through an analysis of the recent paraliterature.
The beginning of the eighties has been defined as the ?Italian rebirth? period. In those years, overcoming the negative stereotypes, the Italians have been able to redefine the image of themselves and of their country, providing a new and definitely positive connotation to the artifacts of their own economy, now proudly defined as Made in Italy. But how and why has this shift occurred? Not only Italy had changed, but even the United States needed something different. If there has been a radical change in the perception of Italy and Italianness in the USA and more generally in the Western world since the end of the 1970s, we must turn our attention to the countries that began looking at Italy with ?different eyes?.
Which needs did American culture consumers had and why did these needs change in the second half of the 1970s? If these new visions have grown to a global extent, if Italy has become the country of the dolce vita for the whole world, it is due, in large part, to a change in the attitude of foreign countries, the United States and Northern Europe in the first place, which began to perceive Italy as a desirable ?The Other?: because, in countries culturally and geographically distant from Italy, a new awareness of their own cultural identity was rising with a new need for otherness. Due to this new articulation in the perception of the Italian spirit this research considers above all, the literary works published starting from the second half of the seventies.
The highly successful literary works concerning Italy, written by American authors during the sixties, are completely different from those of the following decades, and not only for stylistic reasons. The vision of Italy, still very traditional, was fundamentally anchored to two aspects: Italy as a country of the Great Culture, and Italy as a country linked to the Catholic Church. Irving Stone and Morris West were two successful authors who wrote about Italianness by adopting this type of perception, and consequently satisfying a certain type of social function. It is true that Puzo published The Godfather in 1969: but it was perhaps the ability to anticipate a great change in the social needs of the audience that earned its author an incredible commercial success.

Part II analyzes the social function of Italian-themed literature. The basic question is: ?Why is the American reader interested in the idea of Italy?? I started explaining why a certain degree of activism, power of choice and influence on the cultural industry is attributable to the consumer.
In this first part two texts from the early sixties based on the vision of Italy as a country of the Great Tradition will be analyzed; later on (Chapter 10) the ?dream of saving authenticity? will be explored, starting from two texts of the nineties, the period in which the Italian dream began to spread globally. In the paragraph dedicated to the 2000s, we will observe that the fascination aroused by the Italian dream has now become so pervasive as to have originated a sort of pattern, a consolidated one in the mass literature.
Following, a paragraph dedicated to three mainstream works, in order to highlight how much the Italian dream has globally spread even outside of the genre.
Finally, in the last paragraph, I will deal with some of the recently published texts, to try to answer the question: Is the Italian dream still fashionable among consumers of global culture?

Part III Before addressing the representation of stereotypes through texts, I will remind five great thinkers who have dealt with the theme of ideology in relation to mass culture. With Michail M. Bachtin I linger on the social and ideological component of every word and every speech; Ferruccio Rossi-Landi provides a research program for the unmasking of ideologies in art; Pierre Bourdieu analyzes the internal functioning of social structures related to art; Stuart Hall invites us to consider popular culture in its dual essence of conditioning by the field of power and of resisting and assimilating; Finally, Edward Said invites us to set the research in counterpoint terms, to understand how stories and cultures develop together with their geographical opposites.
Chapter 12 illustrates the most important stereotypes about Italy through the use made of it in successful literary works. Even positive visions, if standardized, are to be considered stereotypes. The Italian identity, according to my perspective, is built socially and is so supranational that the same identity problems in reaction to cultural representations are felt, even amplified, in the worldwide Italian communities. Last chapter and conclusions deal with transculturation and with ?most visible Italy?, to show how, in many cases, even ?Italy told by Italians? is related with the construction of the national character originating from the global media system.