Janet Levarie Smarr and Daria Valentini, eds. Italian Women and the City

Italica, Spring, 2004 by Carol Lazzaro-Weis

Papotti's analysis of Fausta Cialente's third novel Un inverno freddisssimo. In addition to Morosini's essay on Rea, Ernesto Livorni and Vincenzo Binetti explore changing representations of women's experience of the city in male writings. Venice, Verona and Trieste form the backdrop of Livomi's analysis of Luchini Visconti's cinematic interpretation of Camillo Boito's short story "Senso," the tale of Countess Livia Serpieri's affair with the Austrian lieutenant in the summer of 1866. Livorno argues that Visconti changes the depiction of Livia as an adulterous traitor to one of a recovering Italian patriot who learns to support Risorgmiento ideals although her story also foreshadows the failure of Risorgimento ideals in the twentieth century. Binetti argues that Pavese's representation of women in Tra donne sole is less misogynistic than in his other texts since Pavese is here questioning the myth of the city as an anti-fascist place he himself had developed in other writings.

For the most part, the contributors use various critical theories judiciously although attempts to place Ortese and Cialente's works in a postmodern context by Baldi and Papotli results in some generalizations that deny the specificity of the works of these women. This collection of essays would have been improved by a general bibliography of all works referenced to avoid some incomplete references, such as those in Valentini's essay, or several needless duplications in the individual bibliographies. Nonetheless, the essays in Italian Women and the City, all of high-quality, show how woman's history and writings as well as representations of them, while always relating to other women and conditioned by gender, were linked to specific surrounding cultural myths, political events and literary movements in ways that need to be recognized and understood. And the essays in this volume are good examples of how this can be done.

CAROL LAZZARO-WEIS

University of Missouri/Columbia