Abstract

In order to construct a new concept of national identity, twentieth-century European regimes make propaganda press the official and major medium of dissemination of ideological orientated discourse. This is the context in which some multilingual and bilingual editorial projects are born. According to the hypothesis of this study, the narration of woman and her identity – which generally constitutes a cultural paradigm of first order to which authoritarian regimes reserve maximum priority – in the narrative articles of the Italian writer Orio Vergani deviates from the most conventional echoes of regime rhetoric, presenting an interpretative variant, largely submerged in the text. A paradigmatic example in this regard is Dafne («Legioni e Falangi», 22, 1942, 28-29), which constitutes the focal point of this study, taking into account the process of authorial self-translation and the resulting expansion of the narrative space dedicated to the female figure.