Dal locale al globale (e ritorno)

As part of the research project Global Italy: Circulation and reception of contemporary Italian reality in European countries developed by the Department of the Arts of the University of Bologna, this special issue gathers together articles that focus on a selection of Italian literary, cinematographic, and television products that, through their international success, are contributing to the circulation of a variety of images of Italianness abroad. This collection aims to deconstruct the “brand Italy” that these literary and audio-visual texts are promoting and evaluate how they are perceived and discussed by the public in different national contexts. From the seven articles that are featured in this special issue, three macro-elements emerge. First, we can observe the rapidly growing transnational success of certain contemporary Italian cultural products. These essays seem to define indirectly the contours of a new "semi-instantaneous" canon of transnationalism which includes both culturally legitimated products with limited circulation and products that activate consumption practices and exploit textual resources typical of global bestsellers. Second, the success of these products can be connected to their transmediality, which is confirmed by the interdisciplinary approaches employed by the articles featured in this issue. Third, the articles point to a renewed centrality of the concept of glocalism which can be used to account for the interactions between local and global dynamics employed to attract transnational audiences by presenting nationally rooted stories – often depicting stereotyped local territories, lifestyles, and national identities – that are exposed to global exchanges and that emphasize narrative, representative, and stylistic elements from a globalized point of view.