MACMILLAN Writing and Performing Female Identity in Italian Culture (Italian and Italian American Studies)

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. Review “This collection sheds new light on Italian women artists such as Armanda Guiducci and Vivien Lamarque, Dacia Maraini, and Maria Rosa Cutrufelli. It points to the recognition of female subjectivity through the introduction of themes and structures subverting the aesthetic formulas of twentieth-century Italian art.” (Stefania Lucamante, Ordinary Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature, The Catholic University of America, USA) “This book provides a fresh perspective on women’s desires, constraints, reflections, and breakthroughs in Italian culture throughout the decades since World War II. The rich combination of lesser known texts and contexts, combined with an intermedial and interdisciplinary approach to subjectivity, takes the reader beyond well-known gender paradigms, inspiring his or her own repositioning as observer and/or participant in Italian culture.” (Colleen Ryan, Professor of Italian, Indiana University Bloomington, USA) “This compelling volume on poetry, fiction, as well as cinema and theater, contributes to our understanding of women's relationship to history, subjectivity, and gender representation.” (Daria Valentini, Professor of Italian, Stonehill College, USA) From the Back Cover 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. About the Author 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.