Hipkins, Danielle E. (2000) Unmanned territories : contemporary Italian women writers and the intertextual space of fantastic fiction. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

Thethesis examines how somewomen writers of fiction relate to the question of
literary tradition in the 1980sand 1990s. Contemporary literary practice appears to be
dominated by postmodern anxiety about a state of 'late arrival' as writers. I wish to
explore how womenwriters' experience of the weight of literary predecessors is
affected by their different subject position. I chooseto site this study within the area of
fantastic fiction for several reasons. The fantastic tradition in Italy was largely
overlooked by the critics until the 1980s- a factor which has exacerbated the neglect
ofwomen's contribution to it. More importantly the fantastic is now vaunted by
contemporary criticism as an area conducive to transgressive challenges to traditional
literary practice, particularly for women writers. At the same time, however, the
traditional tropes ofthe predominantly male-authored canon of fantastic literature offer
a problematic and challenging range of gender stereotypes for female authors to 'rewrite'.
I choose to focus on the notion of space both literally and metaphorically in the
development ofthis thesis. In the opening chapter I tease out the threads which
connect space, Italianwomenwriters and the fantastic. I beginby showing that the
fantastic itselfis often construed spatially as a genre and offers potential for spatial
innovation. This suggests a subtler way of looking at womenwriters' use of literary
models, which avoids falling into simplistic analyses of gender portrayal. I then outline
the position of womenwriters in Italy in relation to the genre ofthe fantastic. I suggest
that the missing sense of a womenwriters' tradition in this genre maybe one reason
whythe fantastic is used to explore self-consciously the relation betweenthe female
writer and the male authored text. Finally I showhow the fantastic offerswomen a
space in which to re-write, namely through their manipulation ofthe literal and
metaphorical spaces ofthe text.
The following two chapters execute this study with close reference to texts by
four authors. The second chapter is dedicated to the early fiction ofPaola Capriolo
whoseexperience ofliterary tradition as a particularly claustrophobic space inspired
this thesis. I agree with the widely held viewthat her use of a Gothic-oriented
fantastic, which privileges a world of enclosure in labyrinthine interiors, reflects a
typically postmodern anxiety about the end ofliterature. I argue howeverthat the
anxiety ofthe writer's relation to literature is more closely linked to her identification
with a predominantly male literary tradition. This gives her writingsome interesting
links with muchearlier examples ofwomen's writing. It also provides an interesting
springboard from whichto look at the treatmentof similar themes of enclosure in work
by other women writers.
The final chapter follows the emergence of new models ofthe fantastic in the
work ofthe writers FrancescaDuranti, RossanaOmbres and Laura Mancinelli. I
suggestthat in their work we see a contemporary use ofthe fantastic 'al femminile'
which juxtaposes the external space with the internal space, giving rise to the recurrent
motifoftravel. I argue that this use of the fantastic genre pushes the genre in a new
direction, towards a space in which the internal fantasy and dialogue co-exist.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PQ Romance literatures
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Women authors, Italian, Italian literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism, Fantasy fiction, Italian -- History and criticism
Official Date:	July 2000
Dates:	Date Event July 2000 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Italian
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Caesar, Ann ; Rawson, Judy
Extent:	iv, 261 leaves
Language:	eng

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