Sara Teardo - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Sara Teardo
This dissertation focuses on women's writing in the fifties and sixties, a period that marks a tr... more This 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 iii 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.
MLN
At the center of her tetralogy, Elena Ferrante stages the manifold issues of female friendship an... more At the center of her tetralogy, Elena Ferrante stages the manifold issues of female friendship and identity formation, of self-actualization and self-annihilation. The story of Lila and Lena, girls turned women in postwar Naples, unfolds against the claustrophobic and violent sociocultural context of a peripheral rione. Reading through the lenses of psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and feminist philosophy, our essay provides some theoretical and interpretive coordinates, focusing in particular on the first, eponymous volume (2011). Starting with the Derridean notion of "trace" which radically problematizes the very act of writing an (auto)biography, our reflection is then triggered by Lacan's account of the mirror stage and its role in the construction of the self through specular relations. Finally, relying on Cavarero's and Butler's insights, we read the symbolic sisterhood between the two girls and their envisioning of an utopian "city with love" as a possible political model of reciprocal exchange and ethical bonding.
This dissertation focuses on women's writing in the fifties and sixties, a period that marks a tr... more This 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 iii 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.
MLN
At the center of her tetralogy, Elena Ferrante stages the manifold issues of female friendship an... more At the center of her tetralogy, Elena Ferrante stages the manifold issues of female friendship and identity formation, of self-actualization and self-annihilation. The story of Lila and Lena, girls turned women in postwar Naples, unfolds against the claustrophobic and violent sociocultural context of a peripheral rione. Reading through the lenses of psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and feminist philosophy, our essay provides some theoretical and interpretive coordinates, focusing in particular on the first, eponymous volume (2011). Starting with the Derridean notion of "trace" which radically problematizes the very act of writing an (auto)biography, our reflection is then triggered by Lacan's account of the mirror stage and its role in the construction of the self through specular relations. Finally, relying on Cavarero's and Butler's insights, we read the symbolic sisterhood between the two girls and their envisioning of an utopian "city with love" as a possible political model of reciprocal exchange and ethical bonding.