L'immaginario della Cina nei reportage di viaggio degli scrittori Italiani (1955-1980)

Travel reportage, one subgenre of travel writings, has been adapted by six Italian authors to write about their travels in China from the 1950s through to the beginning of the 1980s, when China was relatively closed and not an easy travel destination for Westerners. These writings, (first published in journals, then later in books), are: Carlo Cassola's Viaggio in Cina and Franco Fortini's Asia Maggiore on their travels as members of the same delegation in 1955; Goffredo Parise's Cara Cina and Alberto Moravia's La rivoluzione culturale in Cin a on their travels respectively in 1966 and in 1967; Alberto Arbasino's Trans-Pacific Express and Luigi Malerba's Cina Cina on their travels as members of the same delegation in 1980.;By considering these Italian authors' biographies, general literary styles and historical backgrounds of their travels, and by employing imagology, an approach in comparative literature methodology on literary representation of the other cultures, I do a close reading of these texts. Based on my analysis, I focus on what their images of China were, and how the images were formed. I also, concentrate on how the writers expressed the relation between self and other during the encounter with China: assimilation or differentiation, or both; and to further reveal the richness and flexibility in the literary form of travel reportage.;The hybrid nature of reportage (containing both realistic and fictional aspects) is fully demonstrated: informative Cassola, reflective Fortini, narrative Parise, essayistic Moravia, descriptive Arbasino, and imaginary Malerba. Under these literary forms, the image of China that emerges in generally positive: Cassola and Fortini fashion ideological images of China; Parise perceives China with sentiment, writing his reportage like a novel with himself a character; Moravia tries to understand utopian China with rationality; In eyes of Arbasino and Malerba, China is a mix of indecipherable signs and a space to deposit their fantasies and imaginations.;The strongly subjective nature of these writings make them useful materials for showing ideological, political, traditional, and cultural tendencies in each of the traveler-authors. Their travel is a process of knowing themselves through observation and reflection on the other, China. On the other hand, in forming their image of China, they make constant reference to Italy or Europe (their original cultural identity) which is another form of self. These travel reportages are culturally valuable because they can improve our understanding not only on the object of observation, China, but especially of the Italian traveler-author observers, who are a kind of "cultural mediators" between China and Italy, and so between East and West.