A Rome of one s own. Female cultural mediators and their international networks in the 20th century Italy
In the 20th century, Rome was a haven for many intellectual women who became important mediators of Italian and Swedish culture. Today their extensive cultural actions have fallen into oblivion, not only to a wider audience, but also to specialists in literary history, cultural mediation and women’s history. This project aims to highlight three of these forgotten cultural mediators – Ellen Lundberg-Nyblom, Gunhild Bergh och Martha Larsson – by reconstructing their lives and careers, mapping out their international networks and analyzing how their work contributed to intensifying the dissemination of Swedish culture in Italy and vice versa during the 20th century.
Since cultural mediators are defined as individuals who engage in many different cultural interactions, often behind the scenes, their efforts are considered particularly difficult to reconstruct. So far, I have mapped the aforementioned cultural mediators with the help of Swedish sources (archives, newspaper and journal articles, literature), which have resulted in several scientific publications. The purpose of a guest researcher stay at the Swedish Institute in Rome is to supplement the material with data from Italian sources and thus complete an ongoing book project. In Rome there are archives, libraries and research contacts that are necessary to fully reconstruct the efforts of these neglected cultural mediators and thus shed some light on an area of the literary field that has ended up in the shadows.
Final report
The project’s purpose and development
The project was conducted during a five-month research stay at the Swedish Institute in Rome in the spring semester of 2021. The aim of the project was to highlight three forgotten cultural mediators between Sweden and Italy – Ellen Lundberg-Nyblom, Gunhild Bergh and Martha Larsson – by reconstructing their lives and careers, mapping out their Swedish-Italian networks and analyze how their actions contributed to intensifying the dissemination of Swedish culture in Italy and Italian culture in Sweden during a large part of the 20th century. The starting point was that their extensive cultural works have fallen into oblivion, not only among a wider public but also among specialists in literary history, cultural transfer and women’s history.
The project was based on the method that I described in my application and which briefly involves the following steps: 1) reconstruction of the cultural mediator’s socio-biographical background; 2) mapping the mediator’s informal and institutional networks; 3) analyze the mediated texts (or other cultural goods) and the chosen mediation practices (translations, articles, fiction, etc.). This method, which was developed by Diana Roig-Sanz and Reine Meylaerts (2018), was a good start, but I soon discovered that it had its limitations, not least because it omitted things that proved important in the three cases of my study. One such omission regarded the importance of the geographical location for the mediators’ activities as well as the outcome and impact of their work. The project has therefore developed in a direction that places greater emphasis on the location, in this case mainly Italy and Rome, as an intercultural zone. In addition, in the time that has elapsed since I made my application, Meylaerts has published a study in which she merges the method with the theory of complexity, which turns out to be a very fruitful way to analyze the efforts of cultural mediators. In short, the complexity theory questions linear and simplified causal relationships, which are often more confusing and complicated than expected. Mediators must therefore be studied in their entirety, as actors who combine several different but often overlapping roles and thus cross disciplinary boundaries (Meylaerts 2020).
Project implementation
The project was largely carried out in Rome during the period 11 January – 6 June 2021. As this period was largely characterized by covid restrictions, my opportunities to proceed according to the plans were somewhat limited. The purpose of the research stay in Rome was mainly to supplement the material with sources from Italian archives and libraries, but also to create contacts with other researchers. Unfortunately, most of the institutions were closed during my stay, but I had access to the Swedish Institute’s library and archive as well as the archive of the Scandinavian Artists’ Association (Circolo Scandinavo). A planned trip to an archive in Milan could not be carried out. In return, in September I revisited Martha Larsson’s archive in Lund’s University Library. Due to the pandemic, the book project has been delayed, but it is intended to result in a monograph with publication in 2022.
The project’s three most important results
1) The women studied in the project occupied different positions in the cultural field: as a translator and author of nostalgic poetry and romantic novels, the “19th century woman” Lundberg-Nyblom took on a rather traditional female position in her time. The “New Woman” Bergh created for herself a male position as a foreign correspondent, travel writer and expert on Italian literature and politics, while the “Professional Woman” Larsson was entrusted with a professional position as a foreign correspondent in Rome, from which she created herself a space in the Swedish literary field as an introducer and Italian connoisseur.
2) Despite the fact that the three cultural mediators belonged to different generations, had different socio-biographical backgrounds, and were in Italy for completely different reasons, a common pattern is discernable. The project clearly shows that all three experienced a professional exclusion in Sweden, which the encounter with Italian culture changed. A common driving force was to create access to the literary field, which during the first part of the 20th century was still a male-coded arena. The move to Italy became a turning point in their professional lives: their language skills and the fact that they were geographically located in Italy allowed them to create their own niche as cultural mediators and thus continue to develop intellectually and artistically, which would have been more difficult in Sweden. However, they did not always find it easy to reach out with their extensive cultural efforts, which shows that a cultural mediator must have a very strong position in the cultural field in order to exert an impact.
3) The three mediators contributed to modernizing and nuancing outdated images of Italy. It is interesting to compare their representations of the country with the established discourse on Italy. All three showed a clear ambition to nuance, problematize and renew the contrasting images of the country which had been shaped during previous centuries, as well as the contemporary storylines about Italy in the press.
The women who went to Italy in the late 19th–early 20th century, when most male artists and writers had left the city for Paris, should be understood in the context of the Italy-mania that was established among women during the Romantic period. In particular, it was during the Italy’s fight for independence, the Risorgimento, when the country became a symbol of rebellion and the strive for freedom, which emancipated women sympathized with. Even though this has been highlighted on an international level, the area aims to be examined in the Swedish context as well, which leads to some new research questions.
New research questions
One of the results of the study shows how the three mediators tried to change the recurring stereotypical images of Italy. The male travelers and artists who transmitted these images have received a considerable amount of scholarly attention, while their female counterparts have been left out. Women’s images of Rome and Italy are an unexplored field that deserves attention. In an upcoming pilot project, I will therefore investigate how Swedish female writers traveled to, worked in and wrote about Italy in travelogues and fictional texts from the 1880s to the mid-1900s.
Dissemination of research
• The project has been presented during three seminars at: 1) the Swedish Institute in Rome; 2) The Department of Romance Studies and Classics at Stockholm University; 3) The workshop “Translation and power”, organized by the interdisciplinary research network “Language and power” at Stockholm University (Wennergrens center).
• Parts of the project were presented in my keynote lecture “Cherchez la femme! On women’s position-takings in the literary semi-periphery”, at the conference Translation as Position-Taking in the Literary Field Agents and Institutions of Translated Literature in Italy and of Italian Literature abroad (20th and 21th Century), 22-24 April, University of Leeds.
• The article ”Ett eget Rom. Ett forskningsprojekt om kvinnornas Italien” (a Rome of one’s own. A research project on women’s Italy) in ”Rom-horisont”, a journal for the Friends of the Swedish Rome Institute and the Swedish Institute in Rome (2021, no. 2).
• The project and the results will be gathered and presented in a monograph published in the series Avdelningen för litteratursociologi (The Department of Sociology of Literature), Uppsala University, in 2022.
The project was conducted during a five-month research stay at the Swedish Institute in Rome in the spring semester of 2021. The aim of the project was to highlight three forgotten cultural mediators between Sweden and Italy – Ellen Lundberg-Nyblom, Gunhild Bergh and Martha Larsson – by reconstructing their lives and careers, mapping out their Swedish-Italian networks and analyze how their actions contributed to intensifying the dissemination of Swedish culture in Italy and Italian culture in Sweden during a large part of the 20th century. The starting point was that their extensive cultural works have fallen into oblivion, not only among a wider public but also among specialists in literary history, cultural transfer and women’s history.
The project was based on the method that I described in my application and which briefly involves the following steps: 1) reconstruction of the cultural mediator’s socio-biographical background; 2) mapping the mediator’s informal and institutional networks; 3) analyze the mediated texts (or other cultural goods) and the chosen mediation practices (translations, articles, fiction, etc.). This method, which was developed by Diana Roig-Sanz and Reine Meylaerts (2018), was a good start, but I soon discovered that it had its limitations, not least because it omitted things that proved important in the three cases of my study. One such omission regarded the importance of the geographical location for the mediators’ activities as well as the outcome and impact of their work. The project has therefore developed in a direction that places greater emphasis on the location, in this case mainly Italy and Rome, as an intercultural zone. In addition, in the time that has elapsed since I made my application, Meylaerts has published a study in which she merges the method with the theory of complexity, which turns out to be a very fruitful way to analyze the efforts of cultural mediators. In short, the complexity theory questions linear and simplified causal relationships, which are often more confusing and complicated than expected. Mediators must therefore be studied in their entirety, as actors who combine several different but often overlapping roles and thus cross disciplinary boundaries (Meylaerts 2020).
Project implementation
The project was largely carried out in Rome during the period 11 January – 6 June 2021. As this period was largely characterized by covid restrictions, my opportunities to proceed according to the plans were somewhat limited. The purpose of the research stay in Rome was mainly to supplement the material with sources from Italian archives and libraries, but also to create contacts with other researchers. Unfortunately, most of the institutions were closed during my stay, but I had access to the Swedish Institute’s library and archive as well as the archive of the Scandinavian Artists’ Association (Circolo Scandinavo). A planned trip to an archive in Milan could not be carried out. In return, in September I revisited Martha Larsson’s archive in Lund’s University Library. Due to the pandemic, the book project has been delayed, but it is intended to result in a monograph with publication in 2022.
The project’s three most important results
1) The women studied in the project occupied different positions in the cultural field: as a translator and author of nostalgic poetry and romantic novels, the “19th century woman” Lundberg-Nyblom took on a rather traditional female position in her time. The “New Woman” Bergh created for herself a male position as a foreign correspondent, travel writer and expert on Italian literature and politics, while the “Professional Woman” Larsson was entrusted with a professional position as a foreign correspondent in Rome, from which she created herself a space in the Swedish literary field as an introducer and Italian connoisseur.
2) Despite the fact that the three cultural mediators belonged to different generations, had different socio-biographical backgrounds, and were in Italy for completely different reasons, a common pattern is discernable. The project clearly shows that all three experienced a professional exclusion in Sweden, which the encounter with Italian culture changed. A common driving force was to create access to the literary field, which during the first part of the 20th century was still a male-coded arena. The move to Italy became a turning point in their professional lives: their language skills and the fact that they were geographically located in Italy allowed them to create their own niche as cultural mediators and thus continue to develop intellectually and artistically, which would have been more difficult in Sweden. However, they did not always find it easy to reach out with their extensive cultural efforts, which shows that a cultural mediator must have a very strong position in the cultural field in order to exert an impact.
3) The three mediators contributed to modernizing and nuancing outdated images of Italy. It is interesting to compare their representations of the country with the established discourse on Italy. All three showed a clear ambition to nuance, problematize and renew the contrasting images of the country which had been shaped during previous centuries, as well as the contemporary storylines about Italy in the press.
The women who went to Italy in the late 19th–early 20th century, when most male artists and writers had left the city for Paris, should be understood in the context of the Italy-mania that was established among women during the Romantic period. In particular, it was during the Italy’s fight for independence, the Risorgimento, when the country became a symbol of rebellion and the strive for freedom, which emancipated women sympathized with. Even though this has been highlighted on an international level, the area aims to be examined in the Swedish context as well, which leads to some new research questions.
New research questions
One of the results of the study shows how the three mediators tried to change the recurring stereotypical images of Italy. The male travelers and artists who transmitted these images have received a considerable amount of scholarly attention, while their female counterparts have been left out. Women’s images of Rome and Italy are an unexplored field that deserves attention. In an upcoming pilot project, I will therefore investigate how Swedish female writers traveled to, worked in and wrote about Italy in travelogues and fictional texts from the 1880s to the mid-1900s.
Dissemination of research
• The project has been presented during three seminars at: 1) the Swedish Institute in Rome; 2) The Department of Romance Studies and Classics at Stockholm University; 3) The workshop “Translation and power”, organized by the interdisciplinary research network “Language and power” at Stockholm University (Wennergrens center).
• Parts of the project were presented in my keynote lecture “Cherchez la femme! On women’s position-takings in the literary semi-periphery”, at the conference Translation as Position-Taking in the Literary Field Agents and Institutions of Translated Literature in Italy and of Italian Literature abroad (20th and 21th Century), 22-24 April, University of Leeds.
• The article ”Ett eget Rom. Ett forskningsprojekt om kvinnornas Italien” (a Rome of one’s own. A research project on women’s Italy) in ”Rom-horisont”, a journal for the Friends of the Swedish Rome Institute and the Swedish Institute in Rome (2021, no. 2).
• The project and the results will be gathered and presented in a monograph published in the series Avdelningen för litteratursociologi (The Department of Sociology of Literature), Uppsala University, in 2022.