Mondadori’s Publishing Strategies: Genre, Gender, and Translation

This thesis investigates the role played by the publisher Mondadori in the development of the Italian book market as it is today, and in the formation of world literature canons in Italy. Although Mondadori is the leading publisher in Italy, there has been no systematic study that has explored in depth its strategies and different book series, with a focus on translations. This research aims to demonstrate that Mondadori became a dominant player in the book market and, at the same time, a key agent in the process of literary canonisation thanks to multiple strategies of market segmentation and product diversification, embodied by its different book series. With an innovative approach based on Bourdieu’s sociological theories, this work will tackle the issues of literary genres, translation, and gender across three different book series published by Mondadori: Lo specchio, an established poetry series; I Meridiani, a prestigious series of classics; and Oscar Mondadori, the most renowned Italian paperback series. The study is divided into three sections, each dedicated to a different series and covering a timeframe that goes from the period following the Second World War until today. The first section investigates Lo specchio, focusing first on the issues of translations and world poetry and then on that of gender. The investigation will continue with I Meridiani, with an overview of the series and the analysis of its list, and will lastly focus on Oscar Mondadori, by dividing the analysis in three chapters that follow a chronological order focusing on the series in different decades. In conclusion, this study shows that ‘commercial’ and ‘cultural’ books can live together in the list of a publisher that adopts market segmentation strategies, all aimed at convincing the consumers that reading literature is the best way to spend their free time and disposable income. In addition, this research will demonstrate that the transnational literary space is unequal, and its inequalities are dictated by multiple variables, such as gender, literary genres, and languages. Combining these variables help us drawing a clearer picture of the way in which this space is organised and how certain authors cross or do not cross borders and become world literature.