The Feminist Encyclopedia of Italian Literature

415 Pages·1997·1.708 MB·English

by  Russell, R.

THE FEMINIST
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
ITALIAN LITERATURE
RINALDINA RUSSELL
Editor
GREENWOOD PRESS
The Feminist
Encyclopedia of
Italian Literature

THE FEMINIST
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
ITALIAN LITERATURE
Edited by
RINALDINA RUSSELL
GREENWOODPRESS
Westport,Connecticut • London
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
ThefeministencyclopediaofItalianliterature / editedbyRinaldina
Russell.
p. cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN0–313–29435–6(alk.paper)
1. Italianliterature—womenauthors—Dictionaries. 2. Womenin
literature—Dictionaries. I. Russell,Rinaldina.
PQ4063.F45 1997
850.9'00082—dc20 96–35353
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationDataisavailable.
Copyright(cid:1)1997byRinaldinaRussell
Allrightsreserved.Noportionofthisbookmaybe
reproduced,byanyprocessortechnique,withoutthe
expresswrittenconsentofthepublisher.
LibraryofCongressCatalogCardNumber:96–35353
ISBN:0–313–29435–6
Firstpublishedin1997
GreenwoodPress,88PostRoadWest,Westport,CT06881
AnimprintofGreenwoodPublishingGroup,Inc.
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Introduction vii
The Feminist Encyclopedia of Italian Literature 1
Appendix: Entries by Period and Subject 365
Selected Bibliography 375
Index 379
Contributors 401

INTRODUCTION
This feminist encyclopedia, the first one on Italian literature, is directed to the
feminist scholar, the literary historian, and the general reader. It is not an en-
cyclopedia of Italian women writers, although, of course, many writersconsid-
ered here are women; it is rather a companion volume for all those who wish
to investigate Italian literary culture and writings, penned by women and men,
in a feminist perspective. In its comprehensive treatment of feminist themes,
this volume complements Italian Women Writers, another Greenwood publica-
tion, which gathers fifty-one monographic chapters by a team of specialists on
the most prominent Italian literary women from the fourteenth century to the
present.Initsintroduction,thatvolumealsosketchesahistoryofwomenwriters
in Italy.
Over the last twenty years, there has been an increasing interest in feminist
views of the Italian literary tradition both in Europe and in the United States.
Whileinthiscountrytheacceptanceoffeministtheoryandmethodologybythe
academy is an achieved goal, in Italy studies and programs about women’s
writing have been sketched so far almost entirely outside the universities. A
great deal of critical work in thisfield has beendonewithinthesmallprograms
of Italian studies, in the departments of history and comparative literature in
academicinstitutionsoutsideItaly.Amongthegeneral,college-educatedreaders,
knowledge about feminist approaches to Italian writing, and even about the
existence of Italian women writers, remains scanty. This encyclopedia, with its
companion volume Italian Women Writers, intends to make available for the
first time to a wide public a field of intellectual endeavor thatisnowopenonly
to a few specialists.
viii INTRODUCTION
As the title indicates, this encyclopedia is about literature in the traditional
sense of the word. This is appropriate in the case of Italian literary culture. If
atraditionofItalianpopularliteraturewrittenbymenisscantyandintermittently
traced, one may state without fear of contradiction that, with the exception of
writing by religious women, few literary forms and examplesoffemaleexpres-
sionremainotherthanthoseprovidedbycanonicalgenres.Nocorpusofletters,
diaries, or other types of female literary outlet, has been found and collectedin
Italy, besides those already known in literary circles. With a few exceptionsof
self-taught ladies—St. Catherine of Siena, for example, and, in this century,
Grazia Deledda, who won the Nobel Prize in 1926—the women who in Italy
have consigned thoughts and feelings to paper were generally women with a
formal, though often private, education, who setoutto writeinaself-conscious
manner and were prone to engage themselves in canonical genres. Only with
the recent onset of the feminist movement, some women writers have used
popularformsorcreatednewtransgenericformsofwritinginordertosaywhat
traditional genres would not allow. Letter writing is a good example. In the
Renaissance—when most members of the Italian upper class used the written
word for many exigencies and vagaries of social intercourse—several women
wroteletters,someofwhichwerepublishedincollectaneaduringtheirlifetime.
Letter writing was already a highly developed genre, used either as polite con-
versation carried out long-distance among social equals, or, at a more formal
level, asameansof projecting an idealizedselfontothepublicarena.Sincethe
sixteenthcenturyandthroughoutmoderntimes,lettershavebeenwrittenalmost
exclusivelybyliteraryratherthanordinarywomen;theywereaddressedtospon-
sorsorloverswhoalsowereliterarypeople,andhavebeenofinteresttoscholars
for the importance of the men to whom they were addressed.
TherearereasonsforthissituationthatarespecificallyItalian.Theseparation
betweenthesmalleliteofprofessionalintellectualsandotherclasseshasperhaps
always been greater in Italy than in northern European countries. From the
sixteenth century up to World War II, this was as much due to a condition of
widespread illiteracy, which kept wide the gap between the literatefewandthe
illiteratemany,astothetraditionofstrongculturalcontrolsthat,throughoutthe
centuries, various governments, institutions, and political partieshaveexercised
over those with a literary bent. At the same time high culture has always been
rigidly institutionalized, and women, while not totally excluded from it, have
been cramped by the very sponsorship they received. Understanding the rela-
tionship of these women to literature and writing is important. It is not only
crucialtothosefeministswhowishtoexposetherootsofpatriarchaloppression,
but also to the readers who want to become acquainted with western cultural
tradition atlarge. In fact,theideologicalparametersforrepresentingearlymod-
ern women in the West were established to a great extent by the major four-
teenth-centuryItalianauthors—suchasDante,Boccaccio,andPetrarch—andby
those sixteenth-century writers in the vernacular who epitomize the literary
achievement of the Renaissance. The fate of Italian women writers was indeed
INTRODUCTION ix
decisive in shaping the destiny of European women of letters for centuries to
come.Particularlysignificantarethesuddenappearanceofwomenonthesocial
and literary scene in the sixteenth century, their subjugation to the moralistic
control of the church, and the absorption of their literarytalentstothedemands
of patriarchal middle-class society in the ages that followed.
In order to be useful to scholars of different orientations, this encyclopedia
is impartial to all brands of feminist approach. This does not mean, however,
thatdiscussingworksbyawomanistobeconsideredperseafeministexercise,
for women writers, as any other, can, and often do share assumptions that are,
or are considered to be, pernicious to them and other women. When scarce or
no critical feminist material existed on certain subjects, the contributors have
delineated new approaches and made suggestions for a possible new treatment.
Inthismanner,totheadmirationandgratificationoftheeditor,theencyclopedia
notonlyhasbecomeavaluablemapoffeministcriticism,butithasalsocreated
the very foundations of a subject women might want to explore.
The entries, written in an accessiblelanguage,covereightcenturiesofItalian
literature. They fall in several categories, their selection within each category
depending on their relevance to Italian culture and to the development of fem-
inist reflection. Many entries focus on authors, women and men, who either
have already attracted the interest of feminist scholarship or are proposed here
for the first time as interesting subjects of study. As stated above, manycanon-
ical male writers included in this volume were influential in shaping images of
women and gender relations in western society. Other lesser-known male writ-
ers, who have occupied a marginal place in the canon, are presentherebecause
of their special relevance in a woman writer’s perspective. The female writers,
on the other hand, either have identified themselves as feminists or have been
absorbed, to various degrees of awareness, by relations between the sexes and
by the problems connected with them. All authors are listed alphabetically by
theirfamilyname.TheonlyexceptionsareDanteAlighieri,whoisbetterknown
under his first name, and Moderata Fonte, whose express wishwastoappearin
print only under her pseudonym. In the entries for authors, a brief presentation
oftheirtotaloutputgenerallyprecedesafeministdiscussion.Manyotherentries
arededicatedtohistoricalperiodsandliterary-culturalmovementsthatareeither
of European import or specifically Italian—such as Enlightenment, futurism,
humanism,modernism/postmodernism,Petrarchism,Renaissance,Risorgimento,
scapigliatura, and verismo. After a presentation of the period’s or movement’s
main features, each of these entries discusses why that period was or was not
conducive to women’s writing, or with what effects that cultural current was
favorable or hostile to women. Other entries in this volume analyzedisciplines,
schools of thought, and trends in criticism that influenced the shaping of a
feminist perspective, such as Aristotelianism, deconstruction, feminism, Marx-
ism, new historicism, Platonism, and psychoanalysis. Other subjects, likecicis-
beismo, questione della lingua, and weak thought, are considered here for the
first time in relation to feminist positions. Jewish fiction before the Holocaust