Italian Women And Autobiography

Author : Fabiana Cecchini,Ioana Raluca Larco
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 180 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2011-01-18
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781443828345

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Italian Women and Autobiography by Fabiana Cecchini,Ioana Raluca Larco Pdf

The essays included in this collection examine issues such as identity and ideology which are at play in the female autobiography practice, along with the problematicity that these trigger in terms of self-representation and traditional formal boundaries. The women writers analyzed here through mainly historical, literary, feminist and psychoanalytic lenses cover a long period in the history of Italy, spanning from the Fascist era to our time. In an attempt to organize and connect these texts which are chronologically far apart, we have divided our contributions into two main parts. The first, “Shapes of Ideology,” includes authors interacting primarily with political ideology in a way that eventually entails the challenge of the official “technologies of gender” (De Lauretis, 1987) and implicitly, a reflection on the gendered identity. In the second part, “Reconsidering ideology, negotiating autobiography,” while the political ideology is not completely excluded, it becomes however something more internalized and relevant to the writers’ quest for identity. Such process bears consequences with respect to the canon of autobiography, as authors experiment with new forms of autobiographical narratives and readers become more and more an integral component of this personal endeavor.

Author : Graziella Parati
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 207 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 1996
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780816626069

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Public History, Private Stories by Graziella Parati Pdf

In this important volume, Graziella Parati examines the ways in which Italian women writers articulate their identities through autobiography - a public act that is also the creation of a private life. Considering autobiographical writings by five women writers from the seventeenth century to the present, Parati draws important connections between self-writing and the debate over women's roles, both traditional and transgressive. Parati considers the first prose autobiography written by an Italian woman - Camilla Faa Gonzaga's 1622 memoir - as her beginning point, citing it as a central "pre-text". Parati then examines the autobiographies of Enif Robert, Fausta Cialente, Rita Levi Montalcini, and Luisa Passerini. Through her discussion of these women's writings, she demonstrates the complex negotiations over identity contained within them, negotiations that challenge dichotomies between male and female, maternal and paternal, and private and public. Public History, Private Stories is a compelling exploration of the disparate identities created by these women through the act of writing autobiography.

Author : Ursula Fanning
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 261 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2017-09-07
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781683930327

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Italian Women's Autobiographical Writings in the Twentieth Century by Ursula Fanning Pdf

This book highlights the centrality of the autobiographical enterprise to Italian women’s writing through the twentieth century—a century that has frequently been referred to as the century of the self. Ursula Fanning addresses the thorny issue of essentialism potentially involved in underlining links between women’s writing and autobiographical modes, and ultimately rejects it in favor of an argument based on the cultural, linguistic, and literary marginalization of women writers within the Italian context. It is concerned with Italian women writers’ various ways of grappling with constructions of subjectivity throughout the century and sets out to explore them. Fanning reads autobiographical writing as subject to many of the same constraints as fiction and, in doing so, draws attention to the significance of the recurring use of the terms “pure” and “impure” in many critical and theoretical discussions of the autobiographical (where “pure” is used to suggest a truthful representation of a life, while “impure” suggests the messy undertaking of mixing lived experience with fiction). Recurring patterns and paradigms are found in the works of the various writers considered (eighteen in all), and these paradigms are analyzed through close readings of their works. These close readings offer insights into approaches to the constructions of subjectivity in the narratives and are informed by feminist theories. The chapters focus on selves in relationship, taking their lead from the patterns unfolding in the writers’ work, hence the subjects are constructed as daughters (with different views of the self in relation to fathers and mothers), within the confines of the romantic relationship (which involves reconsiderations and rewritings of the romance plot), as maternal subjects, and as writers (with an eye on their relationship to the literary canon, as well as to the relationship with readers). This book argues that there is such a thing as gendered subjectivity and that its constructions may be traced through the texts analyzed.

Author : Claire Marrone
Publisher : Praeger
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2000-06-30
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780313307270

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Female Journeys by Claire Marrone Pdf

In this study of 19th- and 20th-century French and Italian women's autobiography, the author illustrates how the protagonists' development unfolds through separation from oppressive social and familial structures. Reading the selected life stories as bildungsromane and drawing on an array of both canonical and noncanonical texts in the various autobiographical subgenres, Marrone concludes that the heroines' movements away from oppressive structures are not limited to particular historical periods but are motivated by historical and cultural circumstances. She thoughtfully traces the reasons why a 19th-century protagonist might leave her country, a turn-of-the century heroine might flee her family, and a modern female character might separate from her mother, carefully examining their motivations and their goals. In telling their stories, she concludes, women writers continually challenge existing autobiographical conventions. Marrone finds that postmodern texts prove that the journey toward selfhood may be an ongoing one, one that unfolds through the creation of multiple life stories. The author begins her study with a consideration of the tradition of women's autobiography in French and Italian literature of the 19th- and 20th-centuries. Using several examples from various genres, she brings issues of gender oppression, marital abuse, sexuality, and motherhood to the forefront of the discussion. She continues by analyzing the genres of autobiography and bildungsroman—where they overlap and where they diverge, specifically in women's writing. Turning to specific authors and their works, Marrone moves on to an analysis of the writings of Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso, C^D'eleste Mogador, Sibilla Aleramo, Oriana Fallaci, Marie Cardinal, and Annie Ernaux. In examining the works of these writers, the author concludes that women writers continue to attempt to define themselves in their own voices. Marrone finds that postmodern writers participate in innovative experimentation in life writing: hybrid texts, creative auto/biographies, and collective life stories. This clearly written, engaging volume is a pivotal addition to the growing field of literature on autobiography.

Author : Luisa Passerini
Publisher : Wesleyan University Press
Page : 188 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 1996-10-25
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0819563021

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Autobiography of a Generation by Luisa Passerini Pdf

The year 1968 is symbolic in Italy of a decade of struggles by students, women, workers, intellectuals, and technicians. This work documents the intricate web of individual and communal experiences in the political movements of the 1960s. Passerini alternates chapters based on her diaries with interviews of other participants.

Author : Mary Ann Vigilante Mannino,Justin Vitiello
Publisher : Purdue University Press
Page : 374 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2002-12-31
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1557532435

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Breaking Open by Mary Ann Vigilante Mannino,Justin Vitiello Pdf

In this work, prominent Italian American creative women discuss the ways their heritage has impacted their works. They discuss the ways that their childhood memories of immigrants and their practices have been a strong foundation for their creativity.

Author : Fred L. Gardaphe
Publisher : SUNY Press
Page : 222 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2004-01-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0791459179

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Leaving Little Italy by Fred L. Gardaphe Pdf

Provides an overview of the past, present, and future of Italian American culture.

Author : Susanna Scarparo,Rita Wilson
Publisher : University of Delaware Press
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 087413918X

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Across Genres, Generations and Borders by Susanna Scarparo,Rita Wilson Pdf

This book examines the processes involved in writing the lives of women, both as autobiographies and as biographies. Some essays are theoretical discussions about the constructions of self-articulation in women's life writing. Others are more autobiographical, emphasizing the importance of self-articulation for creating possibilities for self-direction. Adopting different theoretical approaches, chapters in this collection highlight the connections between subjectivity and history, feminist concerns about mothering and the mother-daughter relationships, autobiography, discourse and its framing of the relationship between text and life, and the ethics of constructing biographies. The book is divided into three parts: the first part focuses on the process of writing lives as expressed but also contested in epistolary narratives, autobiography and historical fiction. The second part considers notions of female genealogy and the relationship with the maternal, both biological and symbolic. The third part comprises articles which deal with writing outside geographical and metaphorical borders.

Author : Martine Watson Brownley,Allison B. Kimmich
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0842027025

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Women and Autobiography by Martine Watson Brownley,Allison B. Kimmich Pdf

An overview of women's autobiography, providing historical background and contemporary criticism along with selections from a range of autobiographies by women. It seeks to provide a broad introduction to the major questions dominating autobiographical scholarship today.

Author : Maria Marotti
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 297 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2010-11-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780271041254

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Italian Women Writers from the Renaissance to the Present by Maria Marotti Pdf

Author : Wallis Wilde-Menozzi
Publisher : North Point Press
Page : 376 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2020-03-17
Category : Travel
ISBN : 9780374720858

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Mother Tongue by Wallis Wilde-Menozzi Pdf

A probing and poetic examination of language, food, faith, and family attachment in Italian life through the eyes of an American who moved to Parma with her husband and family. In the 1980s, the American writer Wallis Wilde-Menozzi moved permanently with her Italian husband and her daughter to Parma, a sophisticated city in northern Italy, where he became a professor of biology. Her search for rootedness in the city that was to be her home introduced her to complexities in her identity as she migrated into another language and looked for links beyond the joys of Verdi, Correggio, and Parmesan cheese, which visitors have rightly extolled for centuries. The local resistance to change perceived as individualistic led Wilde-Menozzi to explore the pull and challenge of difference and discover the backbone she needed for artistic freedom. In Mother Tongue, Wilde-Menozzi offers stories of far-sighted lives, remarkable Parma men and remarkable women, including the Renaissance abbess Giovanna Piacenza, the fighting Donella Rossi Sanvitale, and her own indefatigable mother-in-law. Framed with a new introduction by the author, and a new foreword by Patricia Hampl, this classic on diversity and tolerance, family, faith, and food in Italy and the United States is at once timeless and timely, a “large, beautiful window into the intelligent, literate, reflective life of Italy” (Shirley Hazzard).

Author : Patrizia Sambuco
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2014-11-12
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781611477917

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Italian Women Writers, 1800–2000 by Patrizia Sambuco Pdf

This book investigates narrative, autobiography, and poetry by Italian women writers from the nineteenth century to today and considers the topics of boundaries and borders in their writings.

Author : Letizia Panizza,Sharon Wood
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 382 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0521578132

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A History of Women's Writing in Italy by Letizia Panizza,Sharon Wood Pdf

This volume offers a comprehensive account of writing by women in Italy.

Author : Walter S. Baroni
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2021-01-14
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781350190733

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Autobiographical Cultures in Post-War Italy by Walter S. Baroni Pdf

After the Second World War, two contrasting political movements became increasingly active in Italy - the communist and feminist movements. In this book, Walter Baroni uses autobiographical life-writing from both movements key protagonists to shed new light on the history of these movements and more broadly the similarities and differences between political activists in post-war Italy.

Author : Dianne Hales
Publisher : Crown
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2009-05-12
Category : Travel
ISBN : 9780767932110

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La Bella Lingua by Dianne Hales Pdf

A celebration of the language and culture of Italy, La Bella Lingua is the story of how a language shaped a nation, told against the backdrop of one woman’s personal quest to speak fluent Italian. For anyone who has been to Italy, the fantasy of living the Italian life is powerfully seductive. But to truly become Italian, one must learn the language. This is how Dianne Hales began her journey. In La Bella Lingua, she brings the story of her decades-long experience with the “the world’s most loved and lovable language” together with explorations of Italy’ s history, literature, art, music, movies, lifestyle and food in a true opera amorosa — a labor of her love of Italy. Over the course of twenty-five years, she has studied Italian through Berlitz, books, CDs, podcasts, private tutorials and conversation groups, and, most importantly, time spent in Italy. In the process the Italian language became not just a passion and a pleasure, but a passport into Italy’s storia and its very soul. She invites readers to join her as she traces the evolution of Italian in the zesty graffiti on the walls of Pompeii, in Dante’s incandescent cantos and in Boccaccio’s bawdy Decameron. She portrays how social graces remain woven into the fabric of Italian: even the chipper “ciao,” which does double duty as “hi” and “bye,” reflects centuries of bella figura. And she exalts the glories of Italy’s food and its rich and often uproarious gastronomic language: Italians deftly describe someone uptight as a baccala (dried cod), a busybody who noses into everything as a prezzemolo (parsley), a worthless or banal movie as a polpettone (large meatball). Like Dianne, readers of La Bella Lingua will find themselves innamorata, enchanted, by Italian, fascinated by its saga, tantalized by its adventures, addicted to its sound, and ever eager to spend more time in its company.