Literary Journals are essental for the artistic health of a country. The flowering perodicals since World War II is an index of the exceptional vitality of the cultural debate in the last fifty years of Italian history. Whether lavishly produced in the traditional cultural centers or founded to give a voice to the artisitic experience of the provinces, journals have performed the fundamental function of providing a ground for the confrontation and exchange among diverse and often competing aesthetic, ideological, and social positions. Their role as both witnesses to and active protagonists in the dialogue of culture is dominated in the collection, which brings together the contributions to the symposium on "The Literary Journal as Cultural Witness," held at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in April 1995.
