Il facchino e il poeta. Immagini e rappresentazioni letterarie dell’industria negli scritti degli operai italiani alle esposizioni universali in Industria, architetture e letteratura nell’Italia del Novecento, |aprile 2014, pp. 19-29.

The porter and the poet. Literary images and representations of the industry in the writings of Italian blue collars at universal exhibitions The organization of worker trips on “educational” visits to universal exhibitions was widespread during the XIX century. Very often the workers, who were chosen according to a rigid selection based upon their “intellectual” skills, were requested to write a report about their experience. These reports are like stories, travel logs and in some cases were chosen for publication, and are therefore part of the vast range of travel literature. They would appear to be classified as récits de voyage, a widespread literature of that period, even though what is recounted is a totally different trip to the classical one of the tourists of that time. The essay analyses the literary aspect of this rich documentation. The literature is present, in these sources, in a double version: as the reports are travel stories, they can be considered literary documents which follow set schemes and are inspired by expressive modules taken from quite a wide range of reading material; but the literature is present also, explicitly and directly, through quotes, famous and popular literary images, which could refer just as much as to the true and proper environment of the exhibitions as to the cities visited.