This volume is an exploration of the innovative ways in which three generations of women writers in modern Italy have dealt with history - both as narration of events and the events themselves. The essays challenge traditional historiography and foster a rereading of history based on the tenets of feminist historicism. They also claim a central role for fiction in the construction of women's history and in a rereading of Italian history.

Italian Women Writers looks at the work of three of the most significant women in late nineteenth century Italy whose domestic fiction and journalism addressed a growing female readership.

Combining close textual readings with a broad theoretical perspective, Gender, Narrative, and Dissonance in the Modern Italian Novel is a study of the ways in which gender shapes the principal characters and narratives of seven important Italian novels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Alessandro Manzoni’s I promessi sposi (1827) to Elsa Morante’s Aracoeli (1982). Silvia Valisa’s innovative approach focuses on the tensions between the characters and the gender ideologies that surround them, and the ways in which this dissonance exposes the ideological and epistemological structures of the modern novel. A provocative account of the intersection between gender, narrative, and epistemology that draws on the work of Georg Lukács, Barbara Spackman, and Teresa de Lauretis, this volume offers an intriguing new approach to investigating the nature of fiction.

Women writers of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italy reinvigorated the modern epistolary novel through their re-fashioning of the genre as a tool for examining women's roles and experiences. Addressing the Letter argues that many epistolary novels purposely tie narrative structure to thematic content, creating in the process powerful texts that reflect and challenge literary and socio-cultural norms. Through the lens of the genre, Laura A. Salsini considers how the works of authors including the Marchesa Colombi, Sibilla Aleramo, Gianna Manzini, Natalia Ginzburg, and Oriana Fallaci highlight such issues as love, the loss of ideals, lack of communication and connection, and feminist ideology. She also analyses what may be the first woman-authored Italian example of epistolary fiction: Orintia Romagnuoli Sacrati's Lettere di Giulia Willet (1818). In their reworking of the epistolary narrative form, Italian women writers challenged dominant assumptions about female behaviours, roles, relationships, and sexuality in modern Italy.

The renewed attention to the origin and shape of nationalist discourses has promoted many excellent studies devoted to examining the rich storehouse of cultural responses produced during and after Risorgimento, the political events that, from 1859 to 1870, led Italy from being a fragmented peninsual to an independent and unified nation-state. However, the assessment of Risorgimento and its myths from the post-World War II era to the present remains, for the most part, unexplored. While it is undeniable that the dramatic economic, social, and political transformations that have characterized Italy from the second half of the twentieth century to the present have altered the role and function of nationalist narratives, it remains equally true that interest in the Risorgimento in modern Italian culture has not diminished.

The Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies is a two-volume reference book containing some 600 entries on all aspects of Italian literary culture. It includes analytical essays on authors and works, from the most important figures of Italian literature to little known authors and works that are influential to the field. The Encyclopedia is distinguished by substantial articles on critics, themes, genres, schools, historical surveys, and other topics related to the overall subject of Italian literary studies. The Encyclopedia also includes writers and subjects of contemporary interest, such as those relating to journalism, film, media, children's literature, food and vernacular literatures. Entries consist of an essay on the topic and a bibliographic portion listing works for further reading, and, in the case of entries on individuals, a brief biographical paragraph and list of works by the person. It will be useful to people without specialized knowledge of Italian literature as well as to scholars.

The essays in this volume revisit the Italian Renaissance to rethink spaces thought to be defined and certain: from the social spaces of convent, court, or home, to the literary spaces of established genres such as religious plays or epic poetry. Repopulating these spaces with the women who occupied them but have often been elided in the historical record, the essays also remind us to ask what might obscure our view of texts and archives, what has remained marginal in the texts and contexts of early modern Italy and why. The contributors, suggesting new ways of interrogating gendered discourses of genre, identities, and sanctity, offer a complex picture of gender in early modern Italian literature and culture. Read in dialogue with one another, their pieces provide a fascinating survey of currents in gender studies and early modern Italian studies and point to exciting future directions in these fields.

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.

Publisher description

Italian Women at War: Sisters in Arms from Unification to the Twentieth Century offers diverse perspectives on Italian women’s participation in war and conflict throughout Italy’s modern history, contributing to the ongoing scholarly conversation on this topic. Part one of the book focuses on heroines who fought for Italy’s Unification and on the anti-heroines, or brigantesse, who opposed such a momentous change. Part two considers exceptional individuals, such as Eva Kühn Amendola, who combatted both with her body and her pen, as well as collective female efforts during the world wars, whether military or civilian. In part three, where the context is twentieth-century society, the focus shifts to those women engaged in less conventional conflicts who resorted to different forms of revolt, including active non-violence. All of the women presented across these chapters engage in combat to protest a particular state of affairs and effect change, yet their weapons range from the literal, like Peppa La Cannoniera’s cannon, to the metaphorical, like Letizia Battaglia’s camera. Several of the essays in this volume discuss fictional heroines who appear in works of literature and film, though all are based on actual women and reference real historical contexts. Italian Women at War furthers the efforts begun decades ago to recognize Italian women combatants, especially in light of the recent anniversary of the Unification in 2011 and global discussions regarding the role of women in the military. Its aim is not to glorify violence and war, but to celebrate the active role of Italian women in the evolution of their nation and to demystify the idea of the woman warrior, who has always been viewed either as an extraordinary, almost mythical creature or as an affront to the traditional feminine identity.