The conference is the concluding event of the research project entitled British Novels for European Readers, European Novels for British Readers; A Working Hypothesis for the Anglo-Italian Case (1945-1965). This project was funded by a British Academy Visiting Fellowship awarded to Dr Sara Sullam (Università Statale, Milan) and hosted by Daniela La Penna at the Department of Modern Languages and European Studies (University of Reading). The project examines the strategies devised by Italian and British publishers to select, evaluate, translate, promote and market fiction from 1945 to 1968. In particular, the project focuses on the critical categories used by intermediators (agents, readers, consultants, translators, series editors) both in Italy and in the United Kingdom so as to gauge how notions such as “modernism”, “realism” and “Neorealismo” were used in the process of transfer, and highlight semantic divergences and commonalities.

Aim of the two-day conference is to foster critical discussion on these issues from different perspectives – English and Italian studies, cultural translation studies, history of publishing, translation studies – to reflect on the theoretical and methodological dimensions driving research on literary transfer. Each panel will focus on one relevant case study and/or from a different angle but always embracing a bilateral approach, be it between two countries (i.e. between two literary fields), between two disciplines (ie history of literature/history of publishing), or addressing the transnational reception of key writers through translation and on the way the latter shaped his/her persona in the domestic field.