Transatlantic literary transfers in the Second Italian Renaissance: the circulation of Italian culture in the U.S. in the post-war era

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article introduces the special issue “Transatlantic literary transfers in the Second Italian Renaissance: the circulation of Italian culture in the U.S. in the Post-war Era”, presenting new knowledge on the collaborative, transnational network that emerged between Italy and the U.S. in the post-war years and facilitated the circulation of Italian literary products in the U.S. By considering literary objects as a special class of products that participated to the establishment and consolidation of “Made in Italy”, and by showing how Italian literary cultures functioned as vectors of a “new” Italian modernity, the article claims that the success of “Made in Italy” was due in no small part to a storytelling strategy that emphasized: (1) the strong friendship between the two nations in the context of the new, globalized world; and (2) the mobilization of the trope of the Renaissance in the service of a projected continuity between Italian early and “new” modernity.