Italian Women Writers, 1800–2000

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 Hallamore Caesar’s opening essay, 'Confinement, and Shifting Boundaries in Post-Unification Writing by Women,' and Margherita Ganeri’s piece on the narrative voice in Elsa Morante’s La Storia particularly insightful. It is pleasing that this well-constructed volume treats not only narrative but also autobiographical writings and poetry. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

• IntroductionSection 11.1: Anna Hallamore Caesar “Confinement, and Shifting Boundaries in Post-Unification Writing by Women”1.2: Catherine Ramsey-Portolano “Women Writers Confined: the Case of Neera”1.3: Cristina Gragnani and Ombretta Frau “Nineteenth Century Women Writers Between Marginality and (Aspirations of) Inclusion: A Puzzling Balance”1.4: Rhianedd Jewell “Sardinian Confines in the Works of Grazia Deledda”Section 22.1: Giuliana Morandini “Boundaries, the Work of Writing and the Female Soul”2.2: Eleanor David The Dialogue with the Dead in Patrizia Valduga’s Requiem’2.3: Anne Urbancic “Staging Motherhood: Considering Annie Vivanti’s Fact and Fiction”2.4: Margherita Ganeri “The Shadow of the Author in La Storia”Section 33.1: Rita Wilson “Topographies of Identity”3.2: Simone Brioni “Across Languages, Cultures and Nations: Ribka Sibhatu’s Aulò”3.3: Donatella De Ferra “The Mediation of Borders, in Greta Vidal by Antonella Sbuelz Carignani”3.4: Patrizia Sambuco “Crossing Boundaries and Borders: Matilde Serao’s Travel Writing”