1. Voices from a minor literature: reading the poetry of Else Morante, Amelia Rosselli, Patrizia Cavalli and Biancamaria Frabotta in Context (1968-1982)
- Author
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Binetti, R, Southerden, F, Annovi, G, and Tandello, E
- Subjects
Gender Studies ,Lyric Theory ,Reception Studies ,Italian Women's Poetry ,Cultural History ,Stylistics and Metrics - Abstract
This thesis constitutes the first monograph to analyse the poetry of Elsa Morante, Amelia Rosselli, Patrizia Cavalli, and Biancamaria Frabotta in context. It investigates the entangled networks of personal, political, and literary exchanges between these poets and their texts in the ‘long seventies’ (1968-1982). With the aim of problematizing the difficult heritage of the category ‘scrittura femminile’ within the Italian context, it uses the categories of ‘minority’ and ‘minor literature’ – as theorised by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari – as an aid for the revaluation of women’s poetry. One of the most common tendencies of literary criticism sees women’s poetry as the product of a series of isolated, eccentric, and exceptional ‘cases’. Conversely, the category of ‘minor literature’ allows us to produce a contextual reassessment of their poetic work following two main threads: first, the ‘de-territorialization’ of their poetic language which entails several innovations introduced in their metrical systems, the macrostructures of their books, and the cultural references at the core of their poetry collections; second, the ‘political aim’ intrinsic in the treatment of their lyric subject. This thesis contributes an innovative viewpoint to existing scholarship on Italian women’s poetry, gender studies, and lyric theory by further problematising received notions of ‘scrittura femminile’, literary reception, and anti-canonicity. In turn, it also allows us to relocate the poetry of Morante, Rosselli, Cavalli, and Frabotta within an interconnected system of transnational, transcultural, and transhistorical literary influences.
- Published
- 2023