Introduction: Global Ginzburg—Reading Natalia Ginzburg in the Twenty-First Century

Despite the many English translations of Natalia Ginzburg’s works, her presence in Anglophone literary criticism remains less remarkable. Natalia Ginzburg’s Global Legacies bridges Anglophone and Italian scholarship from around the world, situating Ginzburg’s works in major critical discourses and mobilizing further lines of inquiry. The introduction, “Global Ginzburg: Reading Natalia Ginzburg in the 21st Century,” provides a brief overview of Natalia Ginzburg’s life and reception and then outlines the volume’s three sections and their critical coordinates. The first section, “World Literature and World Making,” uses translation practices, world literature, and transnational studies to theorize Ginzburg’s growing popularity. The second, “Female Bodies, Voices, and Gazes,” draws on gender and queer studies, speech act theory, intersectional feminism, and media studies to focus on Ginzburg’s marginalized characters and to address scholarly gaps. The third, “Identity, Topography, and Forms,” examines Ginzburg through the lenses of trauma studies, topography, novel and essay studies, and Jewish identity. The three sections exemplify how Natalia Ginzburg’s writing can generate and sustain a range of theoretical lenses and approaches while remaining rooted in a recognizable and relatable reality—literature, translation, and the world; the body, the voice, and the gaze; urban spaces, novelistic forms, and expressions of identity.