MACMILLAN Popular High Culture in Italian Media, 1950–1970: Mona Lisa Covergirl (Italian and Italian American Studies)

When Mona Lisa smiled enigmatically from the cover of the Italian magazine  Epoca in 1957, she gazed out at more than three million readers. As Emma Barron argues, her appearance on the cover is emblematic of the distinctive ways that high culture was integrated into Italy’s mass culture boom in the 1950s and 1960s, a period when popular appropriations of literature, fine art and music became a part of the rapidly changing modern Italian identity. Popular magazines ran weekly illustrated adaptations of literary classics. Television brought opera from the opera house into the homes of millions. Readers wrote to intellectuals and artists such as Alberto Moravia, Thomas Mann and Salvatore Quasimodo by the thousands with questions about literature and self-education. Drawing upon new archival material on the demographics of television audiences and magazine readers, this book is an engaging account of how the Italian people took possession of high culture and transformed the modern Italian identity. Review “This book re-invents the history of Italian television. By looking in detail at the heady mix of 'mass' and 'high' culture used by the medium in the early days of Italian television, Barron provides a fresh, exciting and fascinating insight into the ways Italians interacted with and utilised television and its role in Italian life as a whole. An important study which will open up debates in a series of areas.” (John Foot, Professor of Modern Italian History, Bristol University, UK) “Emma Barron’s study of the role of high culture in the formation of Italian mass culture is a path-breaking work that is required reading for any scholar or student interested in the country’s postwar development. It is a brilliant and original analysis of a topic that has not hitherto had the attention it deserves.” (Stephen Gundle, Professor of Film and Television Studies, University of Warwick, UK) From the Back Cover When Mona Lisa smiled enigmatically from the cover of the Italian magazine  Epoca in 1957, she gazed out at more than three million readers. As Emma Barron argues, her appearance on the cover is emblematic of the distinctive ways that high culture was integrated into Italy’s mass culture boom in the 1950s and 1960s, a period when popular appropriations of literature, fine art and music became a part of the rapidly changing modern Italian identity. Popular magazines ran weekly illustrated adaptations of literary classics. Television brought opera from the opera house into the homes of millions. Readers wrote to intellectuals and artists such as Alberto Moravia, Thomas Mann and Salvatore Quasimodo by the thousands with questions about literature and self-education. Drawing upon new archival material on the demographics of television audiences and magazine readers, this book is an engaging account of how the Italian people took possession of high culture and transformed the modern Italian identity. About the Author Emma Barron teaches European film and history in the Department of History at the University of Sydney, Australia, and is an Honorary Research Associate at the Australasian Centre for Italian Studies.