Writing and Performing Female Identity in Italian Culture

1. Introduction 2. The Broken Language of High Poetry: Agency and Emotion in Teresino by Vivian Lamarque; Enrico Minardi.- 3. Re-Appropriation for a New Symbolic Order: The Search for Identity in the Poetry of Armanda Guiducci, Maria Luisa Spaziani and Oliva Gualtieri Bernardi; Rosa Cuda.-PART II: CINEMA.- 4. Mambo and Maggiorate: Italian Female Stardom of the 1950s; Elisa Uffreduzzi.- 5. Mina: Narrative and Cinematic Spectacle of the Italian Woman of the Early 1960s; Paola Valentini.- 6. Beyond the Male Gaze: Conceiving the 'Fourth Gaze' in La bestia nel cuore; Ryan Calabretta-Sajder.- PART III: THEATRE.- 7. From Fairy Tale to Hysteria: Women in Italian Theatre in the Early 1950s; Daniela Cavallero.- 8. Telling Lives, Staging Silences: Dacia Mariani's Biographical Theater; Alex Standen.- 9. Staging the (Sur)real World: Soledad Agresti's Theater of Women; Raffaele Furno.-PART IV: PROSE.- 10.Writing History, Trauma, and the (Dis/Re)Appearance of the Body in Cutrufelli's La briganta; Sandra Walters.- 11.The Treasure Chest and the Talisman: Writing between Reality and Myth in Maria Giacobbe ; Angela Guiso.- 12.Space and Sexualization in the Fin de Siècle Italian Female Narrative; Anna Marchioni Cucchiella.- Notes on Contributors.- Index.

Virginia Picchietti, Professor of Italian at the University of Scranton, USA, writes on twentieth- century Italian women authors and on Italian Jewish Literature and Film.

Laura A. Salsini, Professor of Italian at the University of Delaware, USA, writes on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian women authors.