Gli intellettuali stranieri e l'opinione pubblica internazionale di fronte all'Italia fascista

The essay takes into exam Niccolò Zapponi's works devoted to analyzing the attitudes of foreign intellectuals and observers towards fascist Italy. The first part of the essay focuses on Zapponi's studies on Ezra Pound. These studies - devoted to Pound's involvement with the fascist regime, to his relationship with Italian intellectuals during Fascism, and to the reception of his poems in Italy in the postwar years - are framed within Zapponi's broader research work and within wider developments in Poundian studies. The second part of the essay examines Zapponi's book on cartoons portraying Mussolini and Fascism published by the international antifascist press between 1935 and 1940. Zapponi's analysis of satirical iconography - considered a tool to investigate collective habits of mind as well as expression of older narrative archetypes - is seen in context with other important studies on fascism, iconographic sources and public opinion published in those years. Finally, the essay proposes an interpretation of

these works by Zapponi as a contribution to studies on the image of Italy, in this case fascist Italy, "in the eyes of others". [Publisher's Text].