Italian Women Writers, 18002000

Boundaries, Borders, and Transgression

Contributions by Simone Brioni, Ann Hallamore Caesar, Eleanor David, Donatella De Ferra, Lisa Sarti, Margherita Ganeri, Cristina Gragnani, Rhianedd Jewell, Giuliana Morandini, Catherine Ramsey-Portolano, Patrizia Sambuco, Anne Urbancic, Rita Wilson Edited by Patrizia Sambuco

Publication date:

12 November 2014

Length of book:

198 pages

Publisher

Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

ISBN-13: 9781611477900

Italian Women Writers, 1800–2000: Boundaries, Borders, and Transgression investigates narrative, autobiography, and poetry by Italian women writers from the nineteenth century to today, focusing on topics of spatial and cultural boundaries, border identities, and expressions of excluded identities. This book discusses works by known and less-known writers as well as by some new writers: Sibilla Aleramo, La Marchesa Colombi, Giuliana Morandini, Elsa Morante, Neera, Matilde Serao, Ribka Sibhatu, Patrizia Valduga, Annie Vivanti, Laila Waida, among others; writers who in their works have manifested transgression to confinement and entrapment, either social, cultural, or professional; or who have given significance to national and transnational borders, or have employed particular narrative strategies to give voice to what often exceeds expression. Through its contributions, the volume demonstrates how Italian women writers have negotiated material as well as social and cultural boundaries, and how their literary imagination has created dimensions of boundary-crossing.

Introduction
Section 1
1.1: Anna Hallamore Caesar “Confinement, and Shifting Boundaries in Post-Unification Writing by Women”
1.2: Catherine Ramsey-Portolano “Women Writers Confined: the Case of Neera”
1.3: Cristina Gragnani and Ombretta Frau “Nineteenth Century Women Writers Between Marginality and (Aspirations of) Inclusion: A Puzzling Balance”
1.4: Rhianedd Jewell “Sardinian Confines in the Works of Grazia Deledda”
Section 2
2.1: Giuliana Morandini “Boundaries, the Work of Writing and the Female
Soul”
2.2: Eleanor David The Dialogue with the Dead in Patrizia Valduga’s Requiem’
2.3: Anne Urbancic “Staging Motherhood: Considering Annie Vivanti’s Fact and Fiction”
2.4: Margherita Ganeri “The Shadow of the Author in La Storia”
Section 3
3.1: Rita Wilson “Topographies of Identity”
3.2: Simone Brioni “Across Languages, Cultures and Nations: Ribka Sibhatu’s Aulò”
3.3: Donatella De Ferra “The Mediation of Borders, in Greta Vidal by Antonella Sbuelz Carignani”
3.4: Patrizia Sambuco “Crossing Boundaries and Borders: Matilde Serao’s Travel Writing”

Including essays on a wide selection of well-known and less-known women writers of the last two centuries, this useful collection is arranged in sections devoted to the topics of spatial and cultural boundaries, border identities, and excluded, marginalized identities (including migrant writers). The element of transgression is included in the critical orientation of the volume, as contributors explore how women writers sought to escape the limits imposed on them by social, cultural, and professional presuppositions regarding the role of women in Italian society. As is generally the case in collections of essays by diverse scholars, some essays stand out from the rest in terms of critical acumen, depth, and originality, but all of the essays in the present collection have something of worth to offer. This reviewer found Anne Hallamore Caesar’s opening essay, 'Confinement, and Shifting Boundaries in Post-Unification Writing by Women,' and Margherita Ganeri’s piece on the narrative voice in Elsa Morante’s La Storia particularly insightful. It is pleasing that this well-constructed volume treats not only narrative but also autobiographical writings and poetry. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.