Writing and Performing Female Identity in Italian Culture

This volume investigates the ways in which Italian women writers, filmmakers, and performers have represented female identity across genres from the immediate post-World War II period to the turn of the twenty-first century. Considering genres such as prose, poetry, drama, and film, these essays examine the vision of female agency and self-actualization arising from women artists' critique of female identity. This dual approach reveals unique interpretations of womanhood in Italy spanning more than fifty years, while also providing a deep investigation of the manipulation of canvases historically centered on the male subject. With its unique coupling of generic and thematic concerns, the volume contributes to the ever expanding female artistic legacy, and to our understanding of postwar Italian women's evolving relationship to the narration of history, gender roles, and these artists' use and revision of generic convention to communicate their vision.

Uniquely contributes to our understanding of the legacy of postwar Italian artists across genres by focusing on the representation of female identity Deepens the critical appreciation of the social impact of women artists by investing generic questions in terms of history, agency, and subject formation Brings together a wide variety of source material including Italian prose, poetry, theater, and cinema from the post-World War II period to the early twenty-first century.

Autorentext
Virginia Picchietti, Professor of Italian at the University of Scranton, USA, writes on twentieth- century Italian women authors and on Italian Jewish Literature and Film.

Laura A. Salsini, Professor of Italian at the University of Delaware, USA, writes on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian women authors.

Inhalt

1. Introduction 2. The Broken Language of High Poetry: Agency and Emotion in Teresino by Vivian Lamarque; Enrico Minardi.- 3. Re-Appropriation for a New Symbolic Order: The Search for Identity in the Poetry of Armanda Guiducci, Maria Luisa Spaziani and Oliva Gualtieri Bernardi; Rosa Cuda.-PART II: CINEMA.- 4. Mambo and Maggiorate: Italian Female Stardom of the 1950s; Elisa Uffreduzzi.- 5. Mina: Narrative and Cinematic Spectacle of the Italian Woman of the Early 1960s; Paola Valentini.- 6. Beyond the Male Gaze: Conceiving the 'Fourth Gaze' in La bestia nel cuore; Ryan Calabretta-Sajder.- PART III: THEATRE.- 7. From Fairy Tale to Hysteria: Women in Italian Theatre in the Early 1950s; Daniela Cavallero.- 8. Telling Lives, Staging Silences: Dacia Mariani's Biographical Theater; Alex Standen.- 9. Staging the (Sur)real World: Soledad Agresti's Theater of Women; Raffaele Furno.-PART IV: PROSE.- 10.Writing History, Trauma, and the (Dis/Re)Appearance of the Body in Cutrufelli's La briganta; Sandra Walters.- 11.The Treasure Chest and the Talisman: Writing between Reality and Myth in Maria Giacobbe ; Angela Guiso.- 12.Space and Sexualization in the Fin de Siècle Italian Female Narrative; Anna Marchioni Cucchiella.- Notes on Contributors.- Index.