Encyclopedia

THEFEMINISTENCYCLOPEDIAOFITALIANLITERATURE

RINALDINA RUSSELL Editor

GREENWOODPRESS

The FeministEncyclopedia of Italian Literature

viii

INTRODUCTION

As the title indicates, this encyclopedia is about literature in the traditionalsense of the word. This is appropriate in the case of Italian literary culture. If a tradition of Italian popular literature written by men is scanty and intermittentlytraced, one may state without fear of contradiction that, with the exception of writing by religious women, few literary forms and examples of female expres-sion remain other than those provided by canonical genres. No corpus of letters,diaries, or other types of female literary outlet, has been found and collected inItaly, besides those already known in literary circles. With a few exceptions of 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 Italyhave consigned thoughts and feelings to paper were generally women with aformal, though often private, education, who set out to write in a self-consciousmanner and were prone to engage themselves in canonical genres. Only withthe recent onset of the feminist movement, some women writers have usedpopular forms or created new transgeneric forms of writing in order to say whattraditional genres would not allow. Letter writing is a good example. In theRenaissance—when most members of the Italian upper class used the writtenword for many exigencies and vagaries of social intercourse—several womenwrote letters, some of which were published in collectanea during their lifetime.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 formallevel, as a means of projecting an idealized self onto the public arena. Since thesixteenth century and throughout modern times, letters have been written almostexclusively by literary rather than ordinary women; they were addressed to spon-sors or lovers who also were literary people, and have been of interest to scholarsfor the importance of the men to whom they were addressed.There are reasons for this situation that are speciﬁcally Italian. The separationbetween the small elite of professional intellectuals and other classes has perhapsalways been greater in Italy than in northern European countries. From thesixteenth century up to World War II, this was as much due to a condition of widespread illiteracy, which kept wide the gap between the literate few and theilliterate many, as to the tradition of strong cultural controls that, throughout thecenturies, various governments, institutions, and political parties have exercisedover those with a literary bent. At the same time high culture has always beenrigidly institutionalized, and women, while not totally excluded from it, havebeen cramped by the very sponsorship they received. Understanding the rela-tionship of these women to literature and writing is important. It is not onlycrucial to those feminists who wish to expose the roots of patriarchal oppression,but also to the readers who want to become acquainted with western culturaltradition at large. In fact, the ideological parameters for representing early mod-ern women in the West were established to a great extent by the major four-teenth-century Italian authors—such as Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch—and bythose sixteenth-century writers in the vernacular who epitomize the literaryachievement 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 tocome. Particularly significant are the sudden appearance of women on the socialand literary scene in the sixteenth century, their subjugation to the moralisticcontrol of the church, and the absorption of their literary talents to the demandsof patriarchal middle-class society in the ages that followed.In order to be useful to scholars of different orientations, this encyclopediais impartial to all brands of feminist approach. This does not mean, however,that discussing works by a woman is to be considered per se a feminist exercise,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 orno critical feminist material existed on certain subjects, the contributors havedelineated new approaches and made suggestions for a possible new treatment.In this manner, to the admiration and gratification of the editor, the encyclopedianot only has become a valuable map of feminist criticism, but it has also createdthe very foundations of a subject women might want to explore.The entries, written in an accessible language, cover eight centuries of Italianliterature. They fall in several categories, their selection within each categorydepending on their relevance to Italian culture and to the development of fem-inist reflection. Many entries focus on authors, women and men, who eitherhave already attracted the interest of feminist scholarship or are proposed herefor the first time as interesting subjects of study. As stated above, many canon-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 present here becauseof their special relevance in a woman writer’s perspective. The female writers,on the other hand, either have identified themselves as feminists or have beenabsorbed, to various degrees of awareness, by relations between the sexes andby the problems connected with them. All authors are listed alphabetically bytheir family name. The only exceptions are Dante Alighieri, who is better knownunder his first name, and Moderata Fonte, whose express wish was to appear inprint only under her pseudonym. In the entries for authors, a brief presentationof their total output generally precedes a feminist discussion. Many other entriesare dedicated to historical periods and literary-cultural movements that are eitherof 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’smain features, each of these entries discusses why that period was or was notconducive to women’s writing, or with what effects that cultural current wasfavorable or hostile to women. Other entries in this volume analyze disciplines,schools of thought, and trends in criticism that inﬂuenced the shaping of afeminist perspective, such as Aristotelianism, deconstruction, feminism, Marx-ism, new historicism, Platonism, and psychoanalysis. Other subjects, like

cicis-beismo, questione della lingua

, and weak thought, are considered here for theﬁrst time in relation to feminist positions. Jewish ﬁction before the Holocaust

x

INTRODUCTION

was never discussed before in any critical context, one more reason for includingit here. The volume also considers feminist literary criticism of Italian literatureas it has developed in Canada, England, Ireland, Italy, and the United States.Women philosophers, such as Adriana Cavarero and Luisa Muraro, whose the-orization centers on women’s identity, have been given individual space. Lit-erary and theatrical genres, including opera, are discussed in several entries,which explain how they originated, why they were important in Italian literature,and which ones were especially cultivated by women.Themes, ideas, and issues that have ﬁgured prominently in the lives as wellas in the imagination of women—for example, abortion, female bonding, dis-ease, dress, food, incest, tradition, and work—are also discussed, because theyloomed large in the social context of the relations between the sexes and of literature. There are social types and stereotypes of women, showing how theywere categorized and constrained throughout history and how they are repre-sented in writing: actress,

comare

, courtesan, enchantress,

mulier sancta

, learnedwoman, nun, saint, shepherdess. Some legal, medical, and social issues—suchas abortion, class struggle, cross-dressing, gynecology, hysteria, and prostitution,are also considered here for the great effect they had on women’s condition andon the imagination of both sexes. Various forms of women’s spirituality arediscussed in the entries dedicated to devotional works, hagiography,

mulieressanctae

, mysticism, and theological works. Those who wish to know how ho-moeroticism, homosexuality, and lesbianism have been represented in Italianliterature will turn to the relative entries and to the discussions on cross-dressingand hermaphrodites. There are also entries dealing with women’s publishing andpublications, as well as with women associations or collectives like the DiotimaGroup, Societa` italiana delle letterate, and Societa` italiana delle storiche. Finally,because of cinema’s importance in shaping the imagination of writers and thepublic, and because ﬁlm courses are usually included in the programs of Italianstudies, there is one entry on ﬁlm, as well as one on the best-known Italianwoman director, Lina Wertmu¨ller.Entries vary in length and internal organization according to their relevanceto feminist studies and to the interest shown by feminist scholars. They are allsigned, with the exception of those written by the editor. A certain amount of overlapping has been allowed, in order to offer a large contextual coverage aswell as a variety of viewpoints. In each entry, the discussion was planned tooffer a general presentation of the subject and a critical exposition of the workswritten on it from a feminist perspective. A short selected bibliography is ap-pended to almost all entries; the works are presented in chronological sequencein order to give an idea of the precedence of, and the possible relationshipbetween the studies done on the subject. To indicate that an author or topic isdealt with in another entry, an asterisk has been placed after it. Many entriesare provided with cross-references identifying contiguous subjects that are dis-cussed elsewhere.

2

ABORTION

involved in parenthood, stages the trial of an unborn child against his mother,and ends with a pessimistic evaluation of life. Elena Gianini Belotti*’s

Il ﬁoredell’ibisco

(The hibiscus flower, 1985), written after the abortion law was im-plemented, presents an inventory of the societal changes brought about by thefeminist movement through the encounter between a former governess and theman she had looked after twenty years earlier, before leaving to get an abortion.With the exception of Ginzburg’s text, which dramatizes the point of viewof a man, abortion is never viewed as an isolated phenomenon, but as a mani-festation of socially ingrained patterns of violence and domination of women.The political discussion over abortion, significantly, was not treated by the fem-inist movement as an issue regarding exclusively women’s reproductive func-tions, but as a symptom of widespread sexism in society. The decriminalizationof abortion, thus, was the culmination of a series of successful campaigns for adivorce legislation (1970), the revocation of the ban against advertising contra-ception (1971), a legislation for working mothers and nursery schools (1971),the institution of equality between the sexes (1975), the establishment of familyplanning clinics (1975), and equal pay for equal work (1977). When in the midstof bitter political debates a bill legalizing abortion was passed in 1978, theChristian Democratic Party petitioned with the right for a referendum to repealLaw 194, and fostered a climate of intense hostility toward the feminist move-ment by appealing to the cultural and ideological hold of Catholicism and fam-ily-related values. Two referenda were held in May 1981. The one sponsoredby the feminist movement and the Radical Party, introducing free abortion ondemand, was defeated by 88 percent of the votes; the Catholic antiabortionmotion, however, was also defeated by 67 percent vote (a larger outpouring of support than that obtained by the pro-divorce coalition in the 1974 referendum).Law 194 did not meet all the demands of the feminist movement, which hadpressed for free and state-subsidized abortion for all women. The decision tocarry out an abortion was formally left to the doctor, and the woman had to beat least eighteen years old and seek to terminate her pregnancy within the firsttrimester. Law 194, however, introduced a window of opportunity for women’sself-determination and, most important, it showed that the alliance of the fem-inist movement with lay forces could bring about a significant victory in anopen confrontation with state power and male-dominated institutions.

See also:

Activism: Twentieth Century; Feminist Theory: Italy; Gynecology.

Bibliography:

Russo, Mary, ‘‘The Politics of Maternity: Abortion in Italy,’’

Yale Italian Studies

1 (1977): 107–127; Ergas, Yasmine,

Nelle maglie della politica. Femminismo, istituzioni e politiche sociali nell’Italia degli anni ’70

(Milan: Angeli, 1986); The Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective.

Sexual Dif- ference: A Theory of Social Symbolic Practice

. Trans. Patrizia Cicogna andTeresa de Lauretis. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990; Bono, Paola,and Sandra Kemp, eds.

Italian Feminist Thought: A Reader

. Oxford, U.K.: BasilBlackwell, 1991; Caldwell, Lesley. ‘‘Italian Feminism: Some Considerations. In

ACTIVISM: NINETEENTH CENTURY

3

Women and Italy: Essays on Gender, Culture and History

. Ed. Zygmut G. Bar-an´ski and Shirley W. Vinall. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991.

ISABELLA BERTOLETTI

Activism: Nineteenth Century.

The main issues that liberal, protofem-inist writers confront in the Ottocento are the need for divorce,* improved work conditions, universal education, the control of prostitution,* and the accelerationof social reform. The most proliﬁc woman writer and propagandist among theOttocento activists was Princess Cristina Trivulzio* di Belgioioso (1808–1871).Belgioioso, despite bouts of ill-health and various enemies, deﬁed the Austrianauthorities, chose exile in France, edited journals, wrote histories of the earlyChurch and eyewitness accounts of the risorgimento,* organized an ambulanceservice in the Rome uprising of 1849, and founded a nursery school and Utopianfarm in Lombardy and at Ciaq-Mag-Oglou in Turkey, thus creating an amalgamof the contemporary woman of action and letters. Indeed, at Naples in March1848 she hired a steamboat to transport herself and a corps of two hundredvolunteers to Genova, to swell the Milan insurrection. Just months later, shewrote an analysis of the same events in a series of articles run by the

Revue desdeux mondes

, published in Paris. In 1866 she published an essay, ‘‘Della pre-sente condizione delle donne e del loro avvenire,’’ suggesting that Italy’s newnational unity could afford to educate interested and qualiﬁed females. She con-cedes that only the armed forces and the magistracy should remain closed towomen.The protagonist of the novel

Emma Walder

(1893), by Bruno Sperani* (pseu-donym of Beatrice Speraz), visits estates worked by her father’s tenants andlistens to their complaints. When her beneﬁciaries call her ‘‘ganza . . . zingara’’(paramour . . . gypsy), she shoulders the scorn aimed at a woman’s activism andtries to overcome her limitations as a ‘‘dishonored’’ woman. Sibilla Aleramo,*in

Una donna

(1906), tells how she and the writer Giovanni Cena started ele-mentary school rooms for disadvantaged children in the Agro romano, after herliberating, life-enhancing ﬂight from an unsatisfactory marriage. In

Io e il miolettore

(1910), the liberal journalist Donna Paola (pseudonym of Paola Baron-chelli Grosson, born 1866) denounces the constriction of women by the Catholiccatechism, the banality of indissoluble marriage, and the grotesqueness of sexlegalized by monogamy. This is an early feminist

cahier de dole´ances

, whereanger is mingled with compassion, about the falling, shot, disﬁgured, punched,tortured, and murdered women in the daily round of the world. Donna Paolareaches an anarchist position: since women cannot obtain fair laws by tablingpetitions, they must resort to a ‘‘love strike,’’ that is, the withholding of conjugalrelations. Many of these voices of early activism were collected in a rash of new journals—

Un comitato di donne, La donna italiana, La donna, La donnae la famiglia,

and

La missione della donna

—and they were strengthened by thetranslation of foreign women writers—notably Elizabeth Barrett, Harriet Bee-cher Stowe, and George Sand. Later they were subsumed in the essays and

4

ACTIVISM: TWENTIETH CENTURY

journalism of Anna Kuliscioff (1857–1925), a socialist on the fringe of anar-chism, who founded the journal

Critica sociale

with Filippo Turati (1891) andhelped to promulgate the social philosophy of Engels and Marx. Kuliscioff con-tributed to the 1892 amalgamation of Turati’s neo-Socialist group with the Par-tito Operaio Indipendente (started by Costantino Lazzari in 1881) into the newPartito Socialista Italiano. Its part in the popular uprising in Milan in May 1898led to her arrest, together with Filippo Turati, Leonida Bissolati, and the Catholicleader, Davide Albertario, editor of

Osservatore cattolico

. In 1912 Kuliscioff declared epigrammatically, ‘‘any Italian who wants to enjoy citizenship musttake just one precaution: be born male.’’

Seealso:

Novel: Risorgimento; Women’s Periodicals: From 1860 to the EarlyTwentieth Century.

Bibliography:

Anna Kuliscioff: in memoria

. Milan: Lazzari, 1926; PaolaDonna (Paola Baronchelli Grasson).

Io e il mio elettore. Propositi e spropositidi una futura deputata

. Lanciano: Carabba, 1910; Bortolotti, F. P.

Alle originidel movimento femminile in Italia: 1848–1892

. Torino: Einaudi, 1975; Bel-gioioso, Cristina di.

Il 1848 a Milano e a Venezia. Con uno scritto sulla con-dizione delle donne

. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1977; Cataluccio, Franco. ‘‘L’azionepolitica nell’eta` giolittiana.’’ In

Novecento: Gli scrittori e la cultura letterarianella societa` italiana

. Ed. Gianni Grana. Vol. 1. Milan: Marzorati, 1980. 5–26.

BRUCE MERRY

Activism:TwentiethCentury.

Since the beginning of the feminist move-ment in the latter part of the nineteenth century, Italian feminists have promotedgroup activism to produce change in the social, literary, and political realms. In1881, Anna Maria Mozzoni (1837–1920)—who wrote several books and articlesdeploring the Mazzinian vision of woman as the angel of the hearth (‘‘angelodel focolare’’) and translated John Stuart Mill’s

Subjugation of Women

—founded the League to Promote Female Interests (Lega promotrice degli interessifemminili) to promote women’s entrance and equality in public areas such aslaw, education, and work. This organization and others—such as the NationalCouncil of Women (Consiglio Nazionale Donne Italiane, 1904) and the NationalSuffrage Committee (Pro Suffragio, 1904)—however, were not successful inimproving women’s economic and social status, for Italy’s reunification did notdevelop a flourishing middle-class culture and the political tensions betweenCatholics, Liberals, Socialists and, later, Fascists were great. Nonetheless, bythe 1920s, a limited public sphere for women was created through the formationof primarily bourgeois women’s philanthropic, medical, and journalist groups.The Italian Resistance against the German occupation (1943–1945), in whichapproximately fifty-five thousand women participated, is often considered to bethe prototype for the type of activism (with mass mobilization and militantactionpromoting change in the social, political, and literary areas) that characterizedthe movements of feminists, workers, and students in the 1960s and 1970s.

ACTIVISM: TWENTIETH CENTURY

5

Women’s groups formed after the war, notably the Union of Italian Women(Unione delle Donne Italiane, 1944), moved successfully to reactivate prewarsupport for women’s suffrage and to reverse setbacks in legal reforms, despitethe reemergence of disagreements within the political parties concerning how todeﬁne and deal with women’s issues.In the 1960s, a new generation of feminists favoring the integration of women’s issues into the general strategy of the Communist Party mobilizedtogether with the students’ (1968) and workers’ (1969) rebellions. New women’sgroups bearing more radical names proliferated (Lotta Continua, Gruppo De-mistiﬁcazione Autoritarianismo, Rivolta Femminile, Fronte Italiano di Libera-zione Femminile, Movimento di Liberazione della Donna). The strong ties of these groups to the Italian Communist Party helped pass legislation legalizingbirth control, divorce,* and abortion,* and establishing a new family code thatabolished the supremacy of the husband and father. Attempts by Christian Dem-ocrats to limit these gains for women as well as debates inside the CommunistParty were met with the formulation within women’s groups of theories of originary and nonnegotiable differences between the sexes and with practices of separatism. The newly formed groups overwhelmingly rejected emancipationistphilosophies that strove to win equality in a masculine society, thus forcingwomen to harmonize work and family to their detriment. In the 1970s and1980s, separatist groups articulated theories on women’s subjectivity, differ-ences, and sexuality, with the intent of forming and putting into practice afeminist political perspective that would reshape the public sphere according totwo essentially different natures, male and female, instead of one masculinenature masquerading as a universal one.Although it is sometimes objected that Italian feminist theory and practicehas shifted toward more private interests, Italian feminists continue to remainactive in the political domain. The removal of the ‘‘Carta delle donne’’—adocument outlining the theory of women’s essential difference from men—fromthe new platform of the Democratic Party of the Left (formerly the CommunistParty) in 1991 is more indicative of continuing tensions among political partiesthan of the failure of women to impose their desires in the political realm.Women hold more than 35 percent of the positions in the Communist Party.Although gains are no longer as visible and dramatic as those made when thenew laws on family, divorce, and abortion were passed, group activism contin-ues in the proliferation of feminist publishing houses, bookstores, scholarly jour-nals, and over one hundred women’s cultural centers and cooperatives, whichhave introduced the woman question on all levels of Italian society. These cen-ters serve as sites for a general renegotiation of women’s status within the po-litical system.

See also:

Fascism; Feminist Theory: Italy; Marxism.

Bibliography:

Ergas, Yasmine. ‘‘1968–79 Feminism and the Italian PartySystem: Women’s Politics in a Decade of Turmoil.’’

Comparative Politics

14

6

ACTRESS: SIXTEENTH TO EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

(1982): 253–79; Birnbaum, Lucia Chiavola.

Liberazione della donna: Feminismin Italy

. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1986; Hellman, Judith.

Journeys Among Women: Feminism in Five Italian Cities

. Oxford, UK: OxfordUniversity Press, 1987; Meyer, Donald.

Sex and Power: The Rise of Women in America, Russia, Sweden and Italy

. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan UniversityPress, 1987; Bono, Paola, and Sandra Kemp, eds.

Italian Feminist Thought: A Reader

. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1991; Caldwell, Lesley. ‘‘Italian Feminism:Some Considerations.’’ In

Women and Italy: Essays on Gender, Culture and History

. Ed. Zygmunt Baran´ski and Shirley W. Vinall. New York: St. Martin’sPress, 1991.

CAROL LAZZARO-WEIS

Actress: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries.

From the beginning of the sixteenth century, letters and chronicles describing court entertainments referto women who appeared as nymphs, dancers, singers, musicians, and probablyactresses, although men also played women’s roles. The founding of profes-sional theater toward the middle of the century gave actresses social standing,legal recognition, earnings, and a place on stage. Eight men signed the ﬁrstknown contract for a professional company in Padua in 1545. In 1564 six per-sons, including a woman named Lucretia of Siena, formed a similar actingcompany. Audience enthusiasm for actresses ran high, and women soon headedcompanies or joined them as

prima

or

seconda donna

or

serva

(also

servetta

).In the years 1570 to 1780, according to a count taken by Cesare Molinari, therewere 550 comedians

dell’arte

, of whom 160 were women. These companieswere professional (i.e.,

dell’arte

) and trained to act

all’improvviso

, although notall performances were improvised and the same troupes performed fully scriptedplays, such as Battista Guarini’s

Pastor ﬁdo

(1589).Playing an

innamorata

, the

prima donna

(ﬁrst lady) commanded a repertoryof witty conceits and solemn pronouncements on love, invented by her orlearned from tradition. Audiences praised both what she said and how well sherecited her part. Rivalries between highly celebrated

prime donne

encouragedaudience enthusiasm. In 1567–1568 a Roman actress called Flaminia broughther troupe to Mantua, where she performed in a comedy with Pantalone and inthe tragedy of Dido changed into a tragicomedy. Competing performances byVincenza Armani divided the town into followers of one

prima donna

or theother; a year later Armani died of poisoning. Scandal, travel, and the distur-bances actresses incited encouraged society to view them as little better thancourtesans. Yet, despite their low social prestige, many actresses pursued careersoffering personal and economic independence.The erudite Isabella Canali Andreini, distinguished poet and faithful wife of the comic actor Francesco Andreini, enhanced the respectability of her profes-sion. When she died in Lyon in 1604, miscarrying her eighth child, she wasgiven a grand public funeral; Torquato Tasso,* Giambattista Marino, GabrielloChiabrera, and others praised her in verse. On stage, Andreini won fame in a

ACTRESS: SIXTEENTH TO EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

7

scenario that portrayed ‘‘Isabella’’ driven to madness by thwarted love. A letterdescribing her performance during the wedding festivities for the Grand DukeFerdinand de’ Medici and Christine of Lorraine in Florence in 1589 recountsthat, after Vittoria Piisimi had played her signature role as a gypsy

(La Zingara)

,Isabella triumphed with an original mad scene in which she sang in French,spoke foreign languages, and imitated the dialects of her fellow actors. Herrepresentation of madness as a loss of identity expressed by speaking in othervoices and in song was taken up in opera, most notably in Gaetano Donizetti’s

Lucia di Lammermoor

(1835). Feminist criticism has interpreted Lucia’s col-oratura madness as a leap to freedom from the male order that denied her choiceand happiness in love.The development of opera* in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries waslinked to

commedia dell’arte

. Since a number of professional actresses werealso skilled musicians and singers, they performed in both kinds of theater.Virginia Ramponi-Andreini, Isabella’s daughter-in-law, for example, sang thetitle role in Monteverdi’s

Arianna

after the scheduled singer fell ill. Operaticroles linked to

commedia dell’arte

include the ﬁgure of the

serva

. Susanna inMozart’s

Le Nozze di Figaro

(1786), with a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, is astrong character consistent with the ﬁgure of the maidservant on the eighteenth-century stage.The

serva

attends one of the play’s ladies, although she might be an innkeeperor the wife of a manservant. There was only one

serva

in a company. Her stagelanguage was generally Tuscan. In the early period of

commedia dell’arte

, the

serva

was an older woman, experienced and earthy, dressed in a plain, nurse-like uniform. The later maidservant matches in wit and resourcefulness, ﬂirtswith, and dresses like the male Arlecchino; she is the

servetta

who changes hercharacter on demand. Carlo Goldoni* disapproved of the actresses’ practice of changing speech and costume according to the character they played. His so-lution was to control characterization by writing all the lines in his plays; yetthe ﬁgure of a high-tempered, independent

donna di spirito

throughout his work is based on the playwright’s observation of the

servette

who interpreted his roles.Goldoni’s artful

servette

utilize acting skills, by impersonating others andpretending to be who they are not. His plots, however, sustain middle-classvalues, and in the end the maidservant is kept in her place. Carlo Gozzi, com-mitted to theatrical fantasy and patrician social values, developed in his ten

Fiabe

two female characterizations with strong feminist traits: Turandot andCherestanı` (in

La Donna Serpente

), the ﬁrst an imaginary Chinese princess, thesecond a half-fairy Queen of Eldorado. Both of these women exercise extraor-dinary power to avoid conventional marriages: Turandot demands the head of all men who fail to answer her riddles; Cherestanı` demands to be kissed whenshe has taken the form of a serpent. Although these two heroines are exceptionsin Gozzi’s work, their tales disclose their author’s awareness that marriagesmade to serve the interests of society may violate women’s needs. Possibly

8

AESTHETICS

Gozzi attained insight into the female personality as a young man in Dalmatia,when he performed as the company’s

servetta

in a male acting troupe.

See also:

Shepherdess; Theater.

Bibliography:

Nicoll, Allardyce.

The World of Harlequin

. Cambridge, UK:The University Press, 1963; Taviani, F., and M. Schino.

Il segreto della Com-media dell’Arte

. Florence: La Casa Usher, 1982; Molinari, Cesare.

La Com-media dell’Arte

. Milan: Mondadori, 1985.

NANCY DERSOFI

Aesthetics.

Aesthetics was developed as a philosophy of art in the mid-eighteenth century. It consists of a speculative and a practical branch (respec-tively concerned with the theoretical deﬁnition of art and its materialproduction). The term derives from the Greek

aı`sthesis

, meaning ‘‘sensation,’’‘‘perception,’’ or ‘‘sensibility.’’ In its modern sense, it was ﬁrst employed byAlexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–1762) in his

Reﬂections on the PoeticText

(1735) and

Aesthetica

(1750), to designate an autonomous discipline whosefield of inquiry is the realm of sensitivity, which, in turn, Baumgarten identifiedwith beauty and art. In recent decades feminist criticism has played a key rolein undermining the tacit reliance of aesthetics on the universality of beauty.More broadly, it has contributed to uncover the social and cultural circumstancesthat partake in the production of taste and to trace the ideological implicationsof aesthetics in its varied exemplifications.In antiquity and the Middle Ages,* the term ‘‘art’’ denoted the competenceand skill acquired by the artisan by training (from its etymological meaning,from the Greek

techne

and its Latin equivalent

ars

), while beauty was viewedas an objective and measurable attribute and generally associated with order,symmetry, and light. In the Renaissance* and Baroque periods the modern imageof the artist (and the modern connotations of art) supplanted that of the artisan:the

Lives

(1550) by Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) is regarded as the first criticalhistory of Italian art and presents a common theoretical basis for all figurativearts. It was in the eighteenth century, however, that art was completely set apartfrom other pursuits grounded in specific technical instruction and perceived asa purely aesthetic activity and the product of the autonomous inspiration of thegenius.Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) are creditedwith the theoretical framework of aesthetics. Vico’s revolutionary philosophy of history, put forth in

The New Science

(1744), examined an age in which knowl-edge and wisdom were rooted in the mythical thinking and imaginative creationsof the poet, and thus advanced the cause for the autonomy of the aesthetic ﬁeld.In his

Critique of Pure Reason

(1781) and

Critique of Judgement

(1790) Kantdeﬁned two different kinds of judgment: one purely contemplative and disin-terested, independent of any utilitarian or practical objective, and the other for-

AESTHETICS

9

mulated according to preconceived notions that schematize sensible experience.He defined the first aesthetic judgment, the second teleological. Kant’s emphasison the autonomous and self-referential nature of the aesthetic judgment estab-lished the premises of the Decadent movement’s self-conscious expression of ‘‘art for art’s sake.’’Italian culture was dominated by the idealistic positions of Benedetto Croce’s(1866–1952) philosophy of spirit. The disinterested and impartial nature of the judgment of taste and the ensuing notion that art is autonomous, immutable, anduniversal, however, were challenged by Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) and Gal-vano della Volpe (1895–1968), who scrutinized the socioeconomic and politicalcontext in which the discourse of the aesthetic was deployed and focused theiranalysis on the concrete conditions and ideological context that guarantee theproduction of art.Italian feminist theory has been keenly interested in inspecting the conceptualframework of aesthetics. As a major social, political, and cultural movement,Italian feminism succeeded in the 1970s in politicizing the language and sig-nifying structures of art as well as its institutional context (schools, galleries,funding agencies, publishing houses, bookstores, etc.).The female body has occupied a central place in the Western cultural imag-ination. Its cultural significance has hardly ever been that of a flesh and bloodentity, but that of a theoretical construct mantled in symbolic layers. Italianliterature, from Dante*’s Beatrice and Petrarch*’s Laura onward, has tradition-ally bestowed woman a central, though always allegorical position—as the ab-stract embodiment of an intellectual process in male-authored texts—whilewomen authors were ousted to the periphery of cultural production.Through the work of eminent philosophers and critics such as Adriana Ca-varero,* Luisa Muraro,* Biancamaria Frabotta, Anna Nozzoli, Elisabetta Rasy,Gianna Morandini, and Marina Zancan, Italian feminist theory has embarked ona project, which is still far from settled, to define a feminine aesthetics. Whilefeminist theory and aesthetics in the 1960s and 1970s were dominated by anideology of marginality, in the 1980s different positions have arisen: somegroups have become inclined to join the mainstream and use literature and artto inspire wider audiences, while others have advocated total separatism andcommitted to the practice of sexual difference in order to infuse all facets of life, not only art, with a feminist perspective.

Bibliography:

Modica, Massimo.

Che cos’e` l’estetica

. Rome: Editori Riuniti,1987; Eagleton, Terry.

The Ideology of the Aesthetic

. Cambridge, Mass.: BasilBlackwell, 1990; Rella, Franco.

L’enigma della bellezza

. Milan: Feltrinelli,1991; Kemp, Sandra, and Paola Bono, eds.

The Lonely Mirror: Italian Per-spectives on Feminist Theory

. London: Routledge, 1993; Lazzaro-Weis, Carol.

From Margins to Mainstream: Feminist and Fictional Models in ItalianWomen’s Writing, 1968–1990

. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,

10

ALERAMO, SIBILLA

1993; Turner, Bryan S. ‘‘Introduction.’’ In Christine Buci-Glucksmann,

Baroque Reason: The Aesthetics of Modernity

. Trans. Patrick Camiller. London: Sage,1994.

ISABELLA BERTOLETTI

Aleramo, Sibilla (1876–1960).

Sibilla Aleramo (pseudonym of RinaFaccio) was a novelist, poet, and political essayist. She was something of aﬁgurehead for Italian feminism in the early years of the twentieth century be-cause of her seminal work

Una donna

(1906), which enjoyed both critical andpopular acclaim.The novel tells, in thinly disguised form, Aleramo’s own story. It is the taleof a young girl who is raped, marries her attacker in accordance with (then)southern Italian custom, eventually becomes pregnant, and gives birth to a sonwho becomes her reason for living. Trapped in a violent and loveless marriage,the protagonist chooses, finally, to leave. This leavetaking, however, involvesleaving her son behind too, since at that time Italian mothers had little or nolegal rights to their children under the ‘‘patria potesta`.’’ Aleramo’s novel, thus,highlights social injustice, questions the legal system, places the position of women in Italy under a critical microscope, and interrogates the terms ‘‘mother’’and ‘‘woman’’ in relation to each other. Aleramo questions the link betweenmotherhood and sacrifice, and describes motherhood as it was conceived of inthe nineteenth and early twentieth century, as a monstrous chain of servitudepassed on from mother to daughter. Her anonymous (everywoman?) protagonistbreaks this chain by choosing to leave the family, and hopes that her son willcome to a different understanding of the mother-child relationship. The novelalso questions what it means to be a woman writer. It is, indeed, writing thatsaves the narrator-protagonist’s sanity, and it is through the discovery of herown mother’s writings that the protagonist finds the courage to break out of herconventional role.

Una donna

is often considered to be the ﬁrst Italian feministnovel.Aleramo went on to become involved in adult literacy courses; her commit-ment to improving the lot of women was matched by her concern for both theworking classes and the uneducated. She travelled widely in Europe and wrotefor various socialist and feminist periodicals. She did not return to writing ﬁctionfor some time after

Una donna

.In her ﬁctional writings, which always retained an autobiographical element,she was repeatedly drawn to the seductions of the romance plot, as in

Amo,dunque sono

(1927). She also translated the love letters of George Sand andAlfred de Musset. She created something of a romantic persona for, and auraaround, herself. Hence, although in many respects a feminist, Aleramo was atthe same time in thrall to conventional images of femininity.

See also:

Activism: Nineteenth Century, Autobiography; Disease; Mother-hood.

ALFIERI, VITTORIO

11

Bibliography:

Aleramo, Sibilla.

La donna e il femminismo: scritti 1897–1910

.Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1978; Caesar, Anne. ‘‘Italian Feminism and the Novel:Sibilla Aleramo’s

A Woman.’’ Feminist Review

5 (1980): 79–88; Conti, Bruna,and Alba Morino.

Sibilla Aleramo e il suo tempo: vita raccontata e illustrata

.Milan: Feltrinelli, 1981; Gu¨nsberg, Maggie. ‘‘The Importance of Being Absent:Narrativity and Desire in Sibilla Aleramo’s

Amo, dunque sono.’’ The Italianist

13 (1993): 139–160.

URSULA FANNING

Alﬁeri,Vittorio(1749–1803).

Often considered the forefather of ItalianRomanticism,* Vittorio Alfieri is the author of tragedies that invoke grandthemes of liberty and individualism, embodied in titanic clashes between twomale figures—an evil, but exceptional, tyrant and his counterpart, the championof liberty. Male-oriented critical studies tend toward analyses of these tragicworks along the lines of the epic hero/tyrant conflict, so that Alfieri’s concernwith psychological depth and realism and with the importance of

forte sentire

(strong feeling) are generally seen in function of traditional male thematic con-tent. More intimate topics, such as Alfieri’s treatment of the family and hisrepresentation of women, are perceived as ‘‘minor’’ subjects, subordinated togrand, polis-centered themes. Some recent research, however, seeks to reevaluateAlfieri’s tragedies, concentrating instead on these ‘‘minor’’ topics and especiallyon their numerous female characters.Traditional analyses of Alfierian women limit interpretation to a series of marginal characters, noted mostly for their adherence to a bland ideal of femi-ninity characterized by delicacy, fragility, and tragic victimization. In a broaderinterpretation of the female role, certain Alfierian female characters function asproponents of familial preservation, as tragic counterpoint to male violence andaggression within a patriarchal and politically driven society. These heroines actas diplomatic arbiters, working to create a peaceful resolution to a conflict orto prevent an impending disaster. In the early tragedy

Filippo

(1775), Isabellaattempts to facilitate a father-son reconciliation that would create an environmentof familial normalcy; in the tragedy

Polinice

(1775) Giocasta acts as fair-mindedmediator between brothers; and in

La congiura dei pazzi

(1779) Bianca makesan outright offer to act as mediator between her feuding husband and brothers,while reminding them of their duties to their family. Elettra’s techniques as afamily savior in

Agamennone

(1778) are quite varied, ranging from simple ex-hortations to her mother to artful diplomacy between parents, to dealing efﬁ-ciently with obstacles to the hoped-for accord. The heroines often belietraditional eighteenth-century views of erratic female behavior as they representthe voice of reason amidst the irrationality of male power-based political action.In most cases, however, their efforts are eventually thwarted, brought to a stand-still by the mostly male insistence on the primacy of other objectives.A variety of heroines deals directly, and successfully, with tyrannical threatsagainst the family. In

Merope

(1782), Merope’s innate intelligence and strength

12

ALFIERI, VITTORIO

serve her well throughout the long, grueling period in which she awaits herson’s return from exile: her foresight in saving Cresfonte as a child and hersharp vigilance during Polifonte’s reign facilitate the overthrow of the tyrant. Inthe tragedy

Antigone

(1776), Antigone and Argia undertake the perilous missionto bury their loved one in a rebellious act of deﬁance against the tyrant’s vio-lation of traditional family ritual; the courage of these two women thwarts thetyrant’s efforts at controlling them. The heroine in

Virginia

(1777), in an atypicalfemale role as mouthpiece for Roman political ideals, displays unexpected ma-turity in her arguments in defense of herself as she bears witness to the truthand negates the tyrant’s falsiﬁed reasoning. Also unusual is the use of a woman,Agesistrata, as standard-bearer for civic ideals in Alﬁeri’s

Agide

(1786): she isthe unﬂinching voice of frankness with the tyrant. More problematic is the pro-tagonist of

Ottavia

(1780), whose irrational love for her monstrous husbandNerone is not diminished by her remarkable insight.Alﬁeri extends to women his vision of a society of free and self-afﬁrmingequal beings in a number of portrayals of tragic heroines as unexpectedly self-contained, independent, and often powerful persons. In

Maria Stuarda

(1780)the protagonist struggles with her power as it places her in the unavoidableposition of mentor to her resentful husband’s political ambitions, even as she isbeset on all sides by men who wish to topple her reign. Unique in Alﬁeri’sworks is the antiheroine found in

Rosmunda

(1780), a female tyrant who skill-fully wields very real and quite ruthless power. The captured queen in

Sofonisba

(1787) is an impressive ﬁgure who maintains her autonomy and wrests controlof her fate from the men who seek to dominate her: in captivity as in love sheis neither dependent nor subordinate to the Other. The most famous of Alﬁeri’sheroines is the protagonist of

Mirra

(1786), the youthful embodiment of uncon-trollable

forte sentire

, who nevertheless displays perfect self-knowledge and un-shakable determination to liberate herself from her dark passion. She drives thetragic action, while family and lover respond in pawn-like roles to her will.Most controversial in Alﬁeri’s repertoire of heroines is the murderous Cliten-nestra in

Agamennone

(and in

Oreste

[1778], although here she appears in agreatly diminished capacity). In a rebellious move against the transgressions of patriarchal society, Clitennestra rejects wifely fidelity and seeks personal power,finally murdering her husband, the author of these patriarchal sins.In his quest for greater psychological depth in his characterizations, Alfieriundermines the traditional assumptions of gender roles. His tragic characters arequite modern—complex, strong figures possessing keen powers of observationas well as great courage in confronting their foes, women who seek to subvertthe male order and assert their own value systems in its place.

See also:

Incest; Romanticism; Theater: From Alﬁeri to the Present.

Bibliography:

Washington, Ida H., and Carol E. W. Tobol. ‘‘Kriemhild andClytemnestra—Sisters in Crime or Independent Women?’’ In

The Lost Tradi-tion: Mothers and Daughters in Literature

. Ed. Cathy N. Davidson and E. M.

ANTHOLOGIES: POETRY, EARLY MODERN

13

Broner. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1980. 15–21; Cech, Lois Mary.

Becoming a Heroine: A Study of the Electra Theme

. Ph.D. diss. University of California Riverside, 1984; Simon, Bennett. ‘‘Tragic Drama and the Family:The Killing of Children and the Killing of Story-telling.’’ In

Discourse in Psy-choanalysis and Literature

. Ed. Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan. New York: Methuen,1987. 152–75; Hirsch, Marianne.

The Mother/Daughter Plot—Narrative, Psy-choanalysis, Feminism

. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989; Fiore,Stephanie Laggini. ‘‘The Heroic Female: Redeﬁning the Role of the Heroine inthe Tragedies of Vittorio Alﬁeri.’’ Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1996.

STEPHANIE LAGGINI FIORE

Alighieri, Dante.

See

Dante Alighieri

Anthologies: Poetry, Early Modern.

In the sixteenth century, when theactivity of the ﬁrst publishing houses was at its highest, many anthologies of verse went through the presses. One volume,

Rime diverse d’alcune nobilissimee virtuosissime donne

, edited by Lodovico Domenichi in 1559 for Busdrago of Lucca, was entirely dedicated to women poets. The best-known among the an-thologies containing poems by both men and women is the so-called Giolitocollection. Originally conceived by Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari of Venice as aseries of nine books, the collection, as we have it today, gathers volumes printedby various publishers in different cities. The ﬁrst two volumes were edited byLodovico Domenichi for Giolito in Venice in 1545 and 1547 with the titles of

Rime diverse di molti eccellentiss. autori nuovamente raccolte

and

Rime di di-versi nobili huomini et eccellentissimi poeti nella lingua toscana

. The third andthe sixth volumes were edited by Andrea Arrivabene and published with slightlydifferent titles by the Venetian printers of Segno del Pozzo in 1550 and 1552.Ercole Bottrigari prepared the fourth volume in Bologna in 1551, while Lodo-vico Dolce edited for Giolito the ﬁfth and seventh volumes:

Rime di diversiillustri napolitani

in 1552 and 1555, and

Rime di diversi Signori napoletani

in1556. The eighth volume of the collection was prepared by Girolamo Ruscelli*with the title

I ﬁori delle rime dei poeti illustri

and was published by Marchio`Sessa of Venice in 1558, while the ninth volume was edited by Giovanni Offredifor Vincenzo Conti of Cremona in 1560.Each volume of the series was reissued several times, either by the samepublisher or by a different one. At times a few poems were added; at othertimes, a reprint of a successful edition was given a new title, thus creating agreat deal of confusion for anyone wishing to track down all editions. Thesuccess of the Giolito volumes prompted other publishers to publish similarcollections, which may be grouped into two categories: the volumes that presentthe latest work by authors already known and those issued by regional printingﬁrms proud to make known to the literate public the poets of their own region.To the latter category belong

Rime di diversi eccellenti autori bresciani

, editedby Girolamo Ruscelli (Venice: Plinio Pietrasanta, 1553) and

Rime di diversi

14

ANTHOLOGIES: POETRY, EARLY MODERN

celebri poeti dell’eta` nostra di Bergamo

(Venice: Comin Ventura, 1587). Someanthologies are abridgements of volumes published earlier: two such examplesare

Rime di diversi eccelenti autori raccolte dai libri da noi altre volte impressi

,edited by Lodovico Dolce (Venice: Giolito, 1553), and

Rime scelte

, edited byTerminio for the same publisher in 1563.Of these anthologies, which are scattered in the rare book sections of manyresearch libraries in Europe and the United States, no comprehensive study hasbeen attempted, nor has anyone made a complete bibliography of them. Evenso, a few features stand out. From the front matter of these volumes, it is clearthat their aim was to supply the reader with new verse of known authors and,at times, with the work of unknown ones. When poems already published arereprinted, explanations for it are given in the preface. They are not, therefore,anthologies in the modern sense of the word, for they do not intend to offer arepresentative view of contemporary poetry, and exhibit no speciﬁc approach tothe material they present. The only exception in this sense is Girolamo Ruscelli’svolume

Fiori

.The importance of these publications for women’s studies cannot be over-stated. Although women are a small percentage of the total number of poetsanthologized, these volumes have made known the work and the names of women writers that might have otherwise disappeared from the record. Somewomen had their work published only in these anthologies. This is the case withboth Isabella di Morra,* whose extant poems came to light in the 1552, 1555,and 1556 volumes of the Giolito series edited by Lodovico Dolce, and VeronicaGa`mbara, whose verse appeared in sixty-eight collections in the sixteenth cen-tury alone. Furthermore, these volumes bear witness to the extent and the mannerin which women were allowed to participate in the cultural activity of theirtimes. Although women poets had to be approved on a social and moral levelbefore they were accepted as legitimate authors, nonetheless the anthologiescreated a new public perception of the woman writer and contributed to viewingher as much less of an extraordinary occurrence.The only anthology dedicated to women’s verse,

Rime diverse d’alcune no-bilissime e virtuosissime donne

, was edited by Lodovico Domenichi and pub-lished by Busdrago of Lucca in 1559. This is a collection of 331 compositions,mostly sonnets of correspondence or sonnets on religious and moral themes.There are some love poems, mostly in the Petrarchan mode, by Cassandra Pe-trucci, Lucrezia Figliuzzi, Laudomia Forteguerri, Silvia Piccolomini, and Vir-ginia Martini Salvi. The description given in the title of ‘‘very noble and veryvirtuous women,’’ implies, according to Marie Franc¸oise Pie´jus, a critical biastoward women. Although the act of publication wants to be an apologia of thebluestocking, Domenichi is careful to stress the acceptable character of thesepoets. All poems are preceded by a dedication and address either an authorpresent in the collection or some highly placed personage. As a result of thesocial structure, women’s literary production is accepted as a regulated socialgame, a superior form of conversation or epistolary art for upper-class ladies.

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