L’isola delle madri assenti: tracce di presenza femminile nella narrativa storica siciliana contemporanea (1990-2007)

The watershed constituted by the historical novels of Leonardo Sciascia (1921- 1989), Vincenzo Consolo (1933-2012) and Andrea Camilleri (born 1925), are starting points for analysing subsequent writings of history in Sicily, particularly those that deal with the hermeneutical function of literature as a means of critically reading official historiography. Nevertheless, whereas ample critical attention has been paid to male writers, whose work is deemed ‘mainstream’, there has been insufficient analysis of the role of female authors in relation to literary representations of Sicilian history. By considering the distinctiveness of the Sicilian literary tradition, the thesis identifies a series of transformations of the genre which have occurred in recent years within the context of feminine writing, and examines the historical narratives of contemporary Sicilian writers Maria Attanasio, Silvana La Spina and Maria Rosa Cutrufelli produced between 1990 and 2007. The study problematizes the lack of critical debate about feminine narratives in Sicily, and places these works in relation to developments in gender and genre theory, focusing particularly on Margherita Ganeri’s studies on the historical genre and the canon. After an introductory chapter which argues the case for examining Sicilian female historical fiction as a distinct literary practice, the subsequent chapters feature textual analyses of each author’s main historical fiction works, supporting the reading of the texts with theoretical readings, including the micro-history of Carlo Ginzburg, the écriture féminine of Hélène Cixous, the abjection theory of Julia Kristeva, the theoretical propositions on “experience” by Joan Wallach Scott and Teresa De Lauretis, and the theory of gender as performance proposed by Judith Butler. The analyses underline the importance of the authors’ distinct feminine perspective over Sicilian history and ultimately suggest that the three writers represent significant examples of a “nomadic writing” to be placed outside the Sicilian male literary tradition.

Chicana poetics: genre and style in Gloria Anzaldúa and Lorna Dee Cervantes

This thesis conducts a formal study of the poetry of Gloria Anzaldúa and Lorna Dee Cervantes, placing their work in dialogue with genre and style. These two Chicana poets are exemplary of politicised experimentation with poetics, underpinned by a keen awareness of the rich history of form, genre and style. In the work of each poet, two poetic modes are examined: one traditional, and one experimental. Anzaldúa’s uses of the dramatic monologue as a border genre, and her construction of [auto]poetics, stemming from her multi-genre, autobiographical approach to writing, are considered. Cervantes’s complex approach to the construction of docupoetics that achieves a depth of field in terms of merging a multidimensional approach to aesthetics with highly politicised transnational content, as well as her engagement with the longstanding poetic of elegy via various formal points of entry, is investigated. These poetic modes are primarily explored via close readings, supported by a multidisciplinary framework that includes Anzaldúa’s feminist theories of identity and writing, abjection theory, postcolonialism, and transnationalism. Overall, these four key areas demonstrate the ways in which aesthetics is a crucial consideration in the exploration of the broader issues of content and context in Chicana poetry.