Twentieth-Century Italian Women Writers : The Feminine Experience

The 11 writers covered in this volume criticize the female role in Italian society, externalize women's unconscious needs and offer unusual examples of female creativity.

This study isolates recurrent and fundamental themes in each author's literary career: linguistic repression by males; personal frustration in the realm of the "householditude"; and disorientation within Italy's unbalanced institutions and hierarchies still anchored in archaic structures.

Rather than focusing exclusively on contemporary living authors, the Amoia discusses writers from the early part of the 20th century, linking them with later writers spanning 20th-century Italy's literary movements and political, social and economic development.

The featured writers are: Grazia Deledda; Sibilla Aleramo; Gianna Manzini; Lalla Romano; Elsa Morante; Natalia Ginzburg; Rosetta Loy; Dacia Maraini; Matilde Serao; Oriana Fallaci; Camilla Cederna.