Rewriting the Journey in Contemporary Italian Literature : Figures of Subjectivity in Progress

The mobility of women is a central issue in feminist analysis of literary works and historical periods. Rewriting the Journey in Contemporary Italian Literature explores the concept of the journey from feminist, psychoanalytic, and postcolonial perspectives, in order to offer an alternative understanding of "moving." Cinzia Sartini Blum examines the new literature of migration in Italian and journeys in the works of Biancamaria Frabotta, Dacia Maraini, Toni Maraini, and Maria Pace Ottieri, to demonstrate that women writers and migrant authors in contemporary Italy present journeys as events that are beyond heroic modern exploration and postmodern fragmentation. Using the mythical figure of Gradiva, Blum shows how contemporary Italian women writers have reinvented Gradiva to reveal subjectivities that challenge and overcome the postmodern melancholia and nihilism prevalent in contemporary male writers and thinkers. She also considers the connection between metaphorical and literal mobility, the role of the intellectual as cultural intermediary, the roles of women in cultural encounters within mass migrations, and how migrancy is a way of being in the postcolonial world. An impeccable piece of original scholarship, Rewriting the Journey in Contemporary Italian Literature will be of interest to feminist, literary, and postcolonial scholars. Contents 5 Acknowledgments 7 Introduction 11 Chapter 1. Beyond the End of the Journey 19 Chapter 2. Gradiva’s Journey: Genealogy of a Feminist Trope 51 Chapter 3. Biancamaria Frabotta’s Lead: From fuga to viandanza 99 Chapter 4. Walking in the Shoes of Another: Dacia Maraini’s Departures and Returns 140 Chapter 5. Exile as the Ultimate Utopia: Toni Maraini’s vivere vagabondo 177 Chapter 6. Bridging Cultures: Figures of Mediation 210 Conclusion: Toward an Interactive Universalism 263 Notes 267 Works Cited 355 Index of Names 381