DescriptionThis dissertation focuses on women's writing in the fifties and sixties, a period that marks a transition for the italiane who are called to actively participate in the life of the new Republic. I explore the questions elicited by women's visibility in the social and cultural scene and the representations of new models of female identity in women's popular press and in narrative works published between 1950 and 1967. In particular, I analyze Laudomia Bonanni's L'adultera, Fausta Cialente's Un inverno freddissimo, and Alba de Céspedes' Quaderno proibito and La bambolona.
By examining how the markers of modernity, such as the setting of the newly industrialized city, the female flanêrie, and the adoption of cinematic techniques, influenced the structure of these women's writers texts, I draw attention to the important narrative role played by liminal milieux. Theoretical as well as historical, this dissertation chronicles the growing phenomenon of women's magazines and popular publications, which functioned, I argue, as a transitional space for models of female identity that both continued and broke with tradition. By investigating the multiple intersections between "high" and "low" literature, I claim that periodicals, fotoromanzi, romance novels, and so-called "high" literature both aim to differently educate a new readership. In order to neutralize the conservative ideology implicitly conveyed by the rosa, women writers parodied or re-elaborated the cliché and language of popular literature.
Ultimately, I assert that the various forms of women's popular writing deserve reevaluation, if we are to draw an accurate landscape of women's writing in the boom decades of the Italian Novecento.