Travel in Giovanni Comisso’s literary work and journalistic writing during the interwar period: findings from a comparison between formats

From 1928 until 1940, the Italian author Giovanni Comisso was entrusted several missions as a traveling correspondent for the Gazzetta del Popolo and the Corriere della Sera (to Paris, the French Maghrib, Northern Europe, Southeast and East Asia, Russia, the Italian colonies and within Italy itself). Therefore, he can be considered an important contributor to the Terza pagina, the ‘third page’, which in Italian newspapers was traditionally dedicated to literature and culture. By republishing important parts of these texts in a volume, Comisso implicitly confirmed their literary value. However, as the overall approach to the missions was ever more determined by ideological objectives that were imposed from above, the writer became reluctant to republish his reportage without important cuts or other transformations. Through the example of Comisso, the contribution puts forward the hypothesis of literary travel journalism as a partially open space that permitted Italian authors to seek or claim a proper role in the nation’s culture, in relative but decreasing freedom with regard to fascist ideology. The principal research technique is a comparison between Comisso’s travel reports as they were published by the two newspapers on the one hand and on the other hand the versions that were republished by the author in a purely literary, non-journalistic context. This technique is complemented by a study of documentary sources on the author, as well as by a detailed discourse analysis. As such, the research aims to contribute to the existing field of study on travel literature and literary journalism in Italy’s fascist era.status: publishe