Autore: Palermitano, Andrea
Titolo: The Popularisation of a Colonial Consciousness through Books. Mondadori’s Colonialist Non-Fiction during Fascism
Periodico: Contemporanea
Anno: 2025 - Volume: 109 - Fascicolo: 2 - Pagina iniziale: 257 - Pagina finale: 274

During the Fascist era, Mondadori assumed a leading position within the Italian publishing landscape, a prominence it achieved thanks to its ability to anticipate and cater to the diverse tastes of a mass readership. It was crucial to establish a solid relationship with the entire Fascist power structure through the publication of titles aligned with the regime’s propagandistic aims. In this context, Mondadori’s non-fiction books played a key role: essayistic and travel works, political memoirs, illustrated volumes, journalistic reportage, and popular manuals contributed to the broader corpus of Italian colonial literature. This paper offers a survey of such publications in order to investigate Mondadori’s editorial strategies, examining the evolution over time in relation to shifting historical and political circumstances. Mondadori produced, in the interwar period, a substantial body of over forty works spanning genres and series, all instrumental in shaping the colonialist portrayal of Fascist Italy. These were often titles proposed by the regime itself, published not primarily for commercial purposes but to maintain favourable relations with political authorities. Through the construction of a colonialist catalogue, Mondadori sought reconcile the commercial imperatives of the publishing house with the regime’s aim of disseminating an apologetic narrative of Fascist colonialism to a general audience, achieved through a diversified editorial offering.




SICI: 1127-3070(2025)109:2<257:TPOACC>2.0.ZU;2-3
Testo completo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/download/article/10.1409/117719
Testo completo alternativo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.1409/117719

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