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A Country of Paper
A Country of Paper spans two countries (the United States and Italy), three generations of women (Alice, her daughter Jane and her granddaughter Sara), and more than sixty years, from World War II to 2011. It tackles issues of cultural identity, family ties, displacement, and loss as it follows Sara in her journey to L'Aquila, Italy, to fulfill her grandmother's last wish. Her personal quest intersects with the town's struggle to recover from the disastrous 2009 earthquake, as Sara painfully uncovers her family's history while trying to find her bearings in a devastated urban landscape. A Country of Paper spans two countries (the United States and Italy), three generations of women (Al...
The Tigress in the Snow
The Tigress in the Snow explores how literature reacted to, influenced, and shaped the evolving notion of motherhood in twentieth-century Italy. From the late-nineteenth century rhetorical celebration of the mother as Madonna, to the Fascist regime's demographic campaign and feminist revisions of the maternal role, Laura Benedetti shows how the mother's social status was a site of constant negotiation in Italy during the last century and how this negotiation came to be represented in literature. To illustrate her theme, she stresses both similarities and differences among four generations of women writers, as well as their complex interaction with their male counterparts, and their reactions to changes in Italian society. The Tigress in the Snow highlights literature's role in the formation of cultural discourses right up to the dawn of the twenty-first century. An intriguing look at the changing nature of motherhood in a country that has always valued the maternal institution, this volume goes further to show how literature investigates, shapes, and envisions social models for the present and future.
The Tigress in the Snow
The Tigress in the Snow explores how literature reacted to, influenced, and shaped the evolving notion of motherhood in twentieth-century Italy. From the late-nineteenth century rhetorical celebration of the mother as Madonna, to the Fascist regime's demographic campaign and feminist revisions of the maternal role, Laura Benedetti shows how the mother's social status was a site of constant negotiation in Italy during the last century and how this negotiation came to be represented in literature. To illustrate her theme, she stresses both similarities and differences among four generations of women writers, as well as their complex interaction with their male counterparts, and their reactions to changes in Italian society. The Tigress in the Snow highlights literature's role in the formation of cultural discourses right up to the dawn of the twenty-first century. An intriguing look at the changing nature of motherhood in a country that has always valued the maternal institution, this volume goes further to show how literature investigates, shapes, and envisions social models for the present and future.
The Right World
While following the police investigation into femicide, you discover The Right World. A society that, as if reflected through a mirror capable of reversing gender roles, is matriarchal. Women make a career only if they have daughters; they have always guided the evolution of the species; the image of human perfection is Vitruvius' woman. It is men who demand equal opportunities, claim equal pay and less discrimination. Between international politics scenarios, the Holy Mother of the Church's statements, episodes of matriarchal fundamentalism, the policewoman who leads the investigation wonders whether to give birth to a daughter. Her doubts and the inquest run parallel along with the crescendo of history, up to the epilogue. It will then be up to you to decide if The Right World is a utopia, an ideal dream to be achieved, or a dystopia, a reality in which we would not want to live, neither as oppressors nor as oppressed.
The Rise of the Diva on the Sixteenth-Century Commedia dell'Arte Stage
The Rise of the Diva on the Sixteenth-Century Commedia dell'Arte Stage examines the emergence of the professional actress from the 1560s onwards in Italy. Tracing the historical progress of actresses from their earliest appearances as sideshow attractions to revered divas, Rosalind Kerr explores the ways in which actresses commodified their sexual and cultural appeal. Newly translated archival material, iconographic evidence, literary texts, and theatrical scripts provide a rich repertoire through which Kerr demonstrates how actresses skillfully improvised roles such as the maidservant, the prima donna, and the transvestite heroine. Following the careers of early stars such as Flaminia of Rome, Vincenza Armani, Vittoria Piissimi, and Isabella Andreini, Kerr shows how their fame arose from the combination of dazzling technical mastery and eloquent powers of persuasion. Seamlessly integrating the Italian and English scholarly literature on the subject, The Rise of the Diva is an insightful analysis of one of the modern world's first celebrity cultures.
Gendered Contexts
The application of feminist thought to the study of Italian culture is generating some of the most innovative work in the field today. This volume presents a range of essays which focus on the construction of gender in Italian literature as well as essays in feminist theory. The contributions reflect the current diversity of critical approaches available to those interrogating gender and offer interpretations of prose, poetry, theater, and the visual arts from Boccaccio, Michelangelo, and Galileo to contemporary Italian writers such as Carla Cerati and Dacia Maraini.
In Search of Elena Ferrante
Elena Ferrante--named one of the 100 most influential people in 2016 by Time magazine--is best known for her Neapolitan novels, which explore such themes as the complexity of female friendship; the joys and constraints of motherhood; the impact of changing gender roles; the pervasiveness of male violence; the struggle for upward mobility; and the impact of the feminist movement. Ferrante's three novellas encompass similar themes, focusing on moments of extreme tension in women's lives. This study analyzes the integration of political themes and feminist theory in Ferrante's works, including men's entrapment in a sexist script written for them from time immemorial. Her decision to write under a pseudonym is examined, along with speculation that Rome-based translator Anita Raja and her husband Domenico Starnone are coauthors of Ferrante's books.
Daughters of Alchemy
The era of the Scientific Revolution has long been epitomized by Galileo. Yet many women were at its vanguard, deeply invested in empirical culture. They experimented with medicine and practical alchemy at home, at court, and through collaborative networks of practitioners. In academies, salons, and correspondence, they debated cosmological discoveries; in their literary production, they used their knowledge of natural philosophy to argue for their intellectual equality to men. Meredith Ray restores the work of these women to our understanding of early modern scientific culture. Her study begins with Caterina Sforza’s alchemical recipes; examines the sixteenth-century vogue for “books of...
International Perspectives on Multilingual Literatures
This carefully curated collection of essays charts interactions between majority languages (including English, French, German, Italian and Japanese) and minority dialects or languages pushed to the margins (including Arabic, Bengali, Esperanto, Neapolitan and Welsh) through a series of case studies of leading modern and contemporary cultural producers. The contributors, who work and study across the globe, extend critical understanding of literary multilingualism to the subjects of migration and the exophonic, self-translation and the aesthetics of interlinguistic bricolage, language death and language perseveration, and power in linguistic hierarchies in (post-)colonial contexts. Their subjects include the authors Julia Alvarez, Elena Ferrante, Jonathan Franzen, Amélie Nothomb, Ali Smith, Yoko Tawada, and Dylan Thomas, the film-maker Ulrike Ottinger, and the anonymous performers of Griko. The volume will be of interest to students of creative writing, literature, translation, and sociolinguistics.
Annie Chartres Vivanti
This book explores the work of a writer, Annie Chartres Vivanti (1866–1942), who brought a transnational dimension to the marked provincialism of the Italian novel by addressing issues of gender, ethnicity, and sexuality on personal and international levels, and by creating work that distanced itself from much of the female-penned literature of the day, scorning both decorum and social respectability. Chapters in this book examine Vivanti’s output from multiple perspectives, taking into account her politics and her career as a journalist, writer, and singer, as well as her literary work.
