Publishers, Translators and Literature Foundations: the Selection, Reception and Image Building of Translated Literature from the Low Countries to Italy

This paper will study the role of translators, publishers and two state-funded organizations (the Dutch and Flemish Literature Foundations) in the selection, reception and promotion of Dutch-language literature in Italy. Drawing on Heilbron (1999) and Gisèle Sapiro’s (2016) insights on literary transfers across central and peripheral cultural fields, this chapter will focus on the literary transfer between two peripheries (the Low Countries and Italy) and on the roles played by the agents operating in the transnational literary field in all the phases preceding and following the publication of Dutch-language translated novels in Italy. By combining the Sociology of Translation with Imagology, this study will show how and why certain choices are made by these agents when selecting and promoting a novel to translate. Lastly, the qualitative data collected by means of interviews will report on the images of the Low Countries spread in Italy through translated literature.