Italian Women Writers, 1800???2000: Boundaries, Borders, and Transgression [Paperback]

Italian Women Writers, 18002000: 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.Patrizia Sambucois Cassamarca lecturer in Italian studies at Monash University.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 Halll��