The Pleasure of Writing: Critical Essays on Dacia Maraini

Edited by Rodica Diaconescu-Blumenfeld and Ada Testaferri

Table of Contents

vii Editors’ Preface
ix Acknowledgments

Part 1
Preliminaries

3 Rodica Diaconescu-Blumenfeld, Vassar College
Introduction

21 Dacia Maraini 
Reflections on the Logical and Illogical Bodies of 
My Sexual Compatriots

Part 2
Demythicizing Genre: Issues of Representation 
and Language

41 Ada Testaferri, York University, Canada
De-tecting Voci

61 Corrado Federici, Brock University, St. Catharines, Canada 
Spatialized Gender and the Poetry of Dacia Maraini

77 Elisabetta Properzi Nelsen, San Francisco State University 
Écriture Féminine as Consciousness of the Condition of 
Women in Dacia Maraini’s Early Narrative

Part 3
Poetics and Practices of Liberation

103 Virginia Picchietti, University of Scranton 
Symbolic Mediation and Female Community in 
Dacia Maraini’s Fiction

121 Giovanna Bellesia, Smith College 
Variations on a Theme: Violence against Women in 
the Writings of Dacia Maraini

135 Daniela Cavallaro, University of Auckland, New Zealand 
Dacia Maraini’s “Barricade Theater”

Part 4
Historiographies

149 Giancarlo Lombardi, CUNY/ College of Staten Island 
A memoria: Charting a Cultural Map for Women’s 
Transition from Preistoria to Storia

165 Maria Ornella Marotti, University of California, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz 
La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa: A Feminist 
Revisiting of the Eighteenth Century

179 Paola Carù, University of Bergen, Norway 
Vocal Marginality: Dacia Maraini’s Veronica Franco

Part 5
Reclaiming the Body in the Construction of Subjectivity

195 Rodica Diaconescu-Blumenfeld, Vassar College 
Body as Will: Incarnate Voice in Dacia Maraini

215 Gabrielle Cody, Vassar College 
Remembering What the Closed Eye Sees: Some Notes 
on Dacia Maraini’s Postmodern Oresteia

232 Pauline Dagnino, University of Auckland, New Zealand 
Revolution in the Laundry

246 Áine O’Healy, Loyola Maramount University 
Toward a Poor Feminist Cinema: The Experimental 
Films of Dacia Maraini

265 List of Contributors
269 Index

Information last updated June 24, 2015

For further information about this book, contact the production editor at clawsons@purdue.edu