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InterArtes, n. 8, 2026
Editors-in-Chief: Laura Brignoli, Silvia Zangrandi
Department of Humanities
Università IULM - Milan
The “foreign” dimension of the text: between literary reception and
cultural representation
The question of the foreign dimension of literary texts, or rather the focus on the experience of otherness, or on what we define as "other"—conveyed through rhetorical strategies, linguistic solutions, and cultural conditioning—is one of the most compelling critical areas that have crossed comparative literature studies over time.
If one of the main objectives of comparative literature is to investigate the “other” dimension inherent in a text and in the writing practices that shape it, then it becomes clear why reflection on foreign works is central to comparative inquiry, particularly from a critical perspective focused on the study of the literary reception of texts produced beyond one’s own cultural sphere.
Here we wish to revisit the innovative impact of an aesthetics of reception which—formulated by Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser as part of the project developed by the School of Constance during the 1960s and 1970s—effectively challenged the autonomy of the literary text, foregrounding instead the relational dimension that links the text to its readership, to its historical context, and to the phenomenological component that characterizes writing itself [R. T. Segers, 1997]. This theoretical position was further taken up and developed in the United States during the 1980s within the framework of Reader-Response Criticism. This approach emphasized the pragmatic dimensions of literature and repositioned the issue of literary reception in light of a growing interest in the socio-cultural dynamics of literary communication and in the processes of identification that arise between reader and text [J. P. Tompkins (ed.), 1980].
The global scenario in which every literary act is produced and situated today—writing, reading, translation, communication, production, dissemination channels—demands an analytical and interpretative approach open to plural and cross-practices, understood as a point of convergence for a humanistic knowledge increasingly founded on the principles of intersection and hybridization, and attentive to the role of technologies in linguistic and communicative processes. The burgeoning of scientific publications and conference activity fueled by studies on intermediality, the phenomenology of the iconotext, on so-called visual storytelling, and neuroscience, to mention only some of the most recent critical perspectives, demonstrates that these constitute the new frontiers towards which much contemporary research in the field of comparative literature is currently moving [M. Freeman, R. Rampazzo Gambarato (eds.), 2018; M. Fusillo, M. Lino, L. Faienza, L. Marchese (eds.), 2021.]
The scientific journal Interartes, in its next issue dedicated to “The Foreign” Dimension of the Text: Between Literary Reception and Cultural Representation”, aims to resume and relaunch methodological reflection on the critical issue summarized here: the reception of the “foreign” dimension of literary works, whether in their original language or in translation. A possible starting point is a focus on the relationship between literary texts and the linguistic and cultural universes within which they operate, since every text—regardless of its context (literary, specialized, advertising, etc.) or its typology (narrative, descriptive, argumentative‑regulatory, etc.)—produces, at various levels (writing, reading, media consumption), encounters between languages and cultures. At the same time, it generates intersections, manipulations, and restitutions of meaning, mediated by interconnected imageries that are themselves represented through specific writing strategies.
With the aim of orienting the critical approach toward the perspective of literary reception within a framework of experiences and forms of knowledge of the “other” that can be progressively traced back to a historical‑cultural dimension, several possible analytical and interpretative paths are proposed:
• Translation. This is not a theoretical approach; rather, it is a linguistic-literary, as well as historical, reading of the translation phenomenon, drawing inspiration from the studies of I. Even-Zohar and G. Toury through the modeling of the literary polysystem. Attention may be directed to the role of translations within the overall literary production of an era, as well as the material conditions of production and dissemination of a literary text in translation, or even the act of translating itself. This includes the confrontation it entails between specifically aesthetic-literary issues (lexical contributions, stylistic shifts, genre transformations, etc.) and socio-cultural aspects (for example, the function of translation as an active agent that fills or compensates for thematic and ideological gaps, etc.).
• Editorial aspects and the dissemination of literature. In this case, the focus converge on editorial, commercial, material, and intellectual factors that can influence, condition, and direct reading—that is, the “consumption” of the “other” dimension of literary texts. These include illustrated editions that reorient the critical evaluation of a work, the role of specialized magazines, and the various forms of intermediation between the text and its audiences.
• Critical readings. This refers to the critical discourse that accompanied the penetration, dissemination, or rejection of a literary work through the press or magazines, both literary and otherwise. Building on these associations, we can then proceed to study the actualization and naturalization of “foreign” literary works, considering multiple aspects, such as the cultural context of the reading public (dominant ideologies, censorship), criteria for literary analysis, the conditions for interpreting the text, and the possibilities for incorporating or disrupting the “foreign” literary work within the relevant social context or within a given cultural tradition. This does not mean overlooking the role played by textbooks in their pedagogical and educational function in a broader sense.
• Comparative studies between literary texts and non-literary fields. Understanding the “other” today increasingly requires investigating the dialectical relationships that all forms of artistic and media representation can develop and maintain with literary texts. From a comparative perspective, the development of cultural knowledge—of which every inter‑artistic relationship is an expression—is essential to a thorough and comprehensive literary evaluation., of which every inter-artistic relationship is an expression, is fundamental to a thorough and comprehensive literary evaluation.
• Odeporic and travel experience. From this perspective, literary texts may include references to personal situations, such as the evocation of travel—its experience and its dramatization through the act of writing. Moreover, the attestations of the “other,” of which any literary work is inevitably an expression, can emerge within the fabric of a writing that bears the marks of a plural cultural and linguistic dimension, experienced and appropriated by the writer and conveyed through the dynamics of both individual and, often, collective imagination. It is by virtue of this process that readings and models of thought are projected and fixed in the text, enabling a dialogue—more or less immediate—between the self and the “other,” and thereby nurturing a cultural experience transposed into the literary work.
• Imagology. Literary images play a key role in the communication of messages and in the representation of otherness within literary texts. They convey linguistic, social, and cultural content: the literary portrayal of the “other” largely passes through the filter of iconic, verbal, and unconscious imagery, ranging from media imagery to the even more heterogeneous world of advertising, and from pictorial and photographic forms to the verbal. Today, images fuel imaginations in which the scopic component joins the linguistic and the mental to define a privileged space for reading and interpreting the reality that surrounds us. Being accompanied by images—whose modes of existence and circulation technological developments continue to diversify—leads us to develop a tendency to formulate our thinking precisely through images (Pageaux, 1994; Proietti, 2008).
Each of the critical paths briefly proposed here leads to the codification of ideological mechanisms that underlie the construction of an axiomatic system, which in turn is necessary to comprehensively frame the reception of literary works within a cultural perspective. This approach rests on the hypothesis of linking the hermeneutic model to the state of the “relational dynamics” existing between the production of the work itself (authorial dimension) and the constellation of phenomena that contribute to its production and that, from their respective positions (as receiver, user, etc.), influence or orient the literary work in morphological, thematic, intermedial, and inter‑artistic terms.
Through this dedicated issue, Interartes seeks therefore to underline that the analysis and interpretation of the “foreign” dimension must take into account the relational dynamics between the source culture and the receiving culture. Without adopting such a perspective, the study of critical or literary reception would risk being confined to a mere appendix of literary history.
Submission Guidelines:
Submitted texts, which must have a theoretical, methodological, or analytical structure grounded in theoretical premises, must be unpublished and written in Word, in compliance with the journal's editorial guidelines published on the website, and will be subjected to double-blind review.
Accepted languages: Italian, English, French, German, Spanish.
Articles must be submitted, accompanied by a brief bio-bibliographical note and an abstract in English, by July 30, 2026, to [email protected].
The issue, edited by Professor Paolo Proietti, will be published in December 2026.
Essential reference bibliography:
Even-Zohar I. (1978), The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystem, in Even- Zohar I., Papers in Historical Poetics, Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, Tel Aviv.
Freeman M., Rampazzo Gambarato R. (eds.) (2018), The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies, Routledge, London.
Fusillo M., Lino M., Faienza L., Marchese L. (eds.) (2021), Oltre l’adattamento? Narrazioni espanse: intermedialità, transmedialità, virtualità, il Mulino, Bologna.
Proietti, P. (2008), Specchi del letterario: l’imagologia, Sellerio, Palermo.
Proietti P., (2014), «Voix et imaginaires nouveaux dans les lettres de l’Italie contemporaine», Diogène, «Passages, frontières, métissages», 246-247.
Proietti P. (2018), Imagologia e traduzione: la rappresentazione dell’Altro attraverso il viaggio del testo, in Sinopoli F., Moll N. (a cura di), Interpretare l’immagine letteraria dell’alterità: prospettive teoriche e critiche comparate, Lithos, Roma.
Segers, R. T. (1997), «La Scuola di Costanza: Jauss e Iser», in J. Bessière, E. Kushner, R. Pageaux D.-H. 1994, La littérature générale et comparée, Armand Colin, Paris.
Tompkins J. P. (ed.) (1980), Reader-Response Criticism. From Formalism to Poststructuralism, The Johns Hopkins UP, Baltimore.
«Traduzione intersemiotica e nuove forme di testualità – Intersemiotic translation and new forms of textuality», Comparatismi, II, (2017).
Sisto M. (2019), Traiettorie. Studi sulla letteratura tradotta in Italia, Macerata, Quodlibet.
Toury G. (1995), The Nature and Role of Norms in Translation, in Toury G. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond, John Benjamins, Amsterdam-Philadelphia.