EPOP-Lab! - Sito del progetto EPOP

Industrial popular culture emerged in mid-Nineteenth century as a literary phenomenon through a range of different serial formats (such as the roman-feuilleton in France, the “penny dreadfuls” in the United Kingdom, the Kolportageliteratur in Germany, etc.). Circulated throughout all Europe by means of an extensive process of translation, imitation and plagiarism, and subsequently largely reused as a primary source in films and comics fictions, popular literature constitutes an important native phenomenon for European cultural identity, a shared depository of themes, narrative topoi and figures – as well as, because of the crucial function of illustrations, iconography – that can instinctively be recognized by the audiences as their own collective memory.

The socio-cultural relevance of this production appears clearly in a continental perspective: reprising and reworking Gramsci’s oft-cited contention, we might say that popular fictions are not only national-popular, but fundamentally “international-popular.” The works of famous authors such as Eugene Sue, Alexandre Dumas, Ponson du Terrail, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, Karl May, Emilio Salgari and so on, and “immortal” characters such as Rocambole, Sherlock Holmes, Raffles, Arsène Lupin, Fantomas, Lord Lister, Morgan the Pirate, Maciste, Belphégor, etc. have been the privileged object of an ininterrupted process of cultural exchange throughout all European countries. The remarkably visual character of such fictions – made explicit both in the illustrations and the iconography associated to these products and in later film and comics adaptations – has enormously facilitated their international dissemination, and may still today represents a powerful means to promote intercultural dialogue among the population of the different countries that constitute the European Union.