Gender, Writing, Spectatorships

This monograph examines Italian women as protagonists and consumers of literature, theatre, opera, and film. Using personal writing, journalism, and canonical texts, it analyses female performance and women's responses.

This original study makes a valuable contribution to Italian feminist/women's history, spectatorship studies, and cultural history by examining women as protagonists, producers and consumers of literature, theatre, opera and film. Drawing on archival material - female correspondence, life-writings and journalism - as well as an impressive range of canonical texts, it brings together detailed engagement with female performance and with female spectators' material responses to "women's opera, theatre and film," placing these in the context of melodrama from the 1880s to the 1920s in Italy, France, the US, and elsewhere. It is unique in its interdisciplinary approach and in its consideration of female relationships based on admiration among performers and writers - the embodiment of a vibrant, mobile and successful Italian female culture industry during the first wave of feminism.

Autorentext

Katharine Mitchell is Senior Lecturer in Italian Culture and Gender at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. She is author of Italian Women Writers: Gender and Everyday Life in Fiction and Journalism, 1870-1910 (Toronto University Press, 2014), and among her co-edited volumes are Women and Gender in Post-Unification Italy: Between Private and Public Spheres (Peter Lang, 2013) and Matilde Serao: International Profile, Reception, and Networks (Classiques Garnier, 2022).

Zusammenfassung

This original study makes a valuable contribution to Italian feminist/women's history, spectatorship studies, and cultural history by examining women as protagonists, producers and consumers of literature, theatre, opera and film. Drawing on archival material female correspondence, life-writings and journalism as well as an impressive range of canonical texts, it brings together detailed engagement with female performance and with female spectators' material responses to "women's opera, theatre and film," placing these in the context of melodrama from the 1880s to the 1920s in Italy, France, the US, and elsewhere. It is unique in its interdisciplinary approach and in its consideration of female relationships based on admiration among performers and writers the embodiment of a vibrant, mobile and successful Italian female culture industry during the first wave of feminism.

Inhalt

Introduction

Chapter One Towards Cross-Disciplinary Female Spectatorships

Chapter Two Spectators, Traviate, and Women's Access to Culture

Chapter Three The Private Female Gaze

Chapter Four The Public Female Gaze

Chapter Five The Imaginary Female Gaze ****

Chapter Six The Female Gaze Beyond Italy

Conclusion

Appendix