The nomad subject: An introduction to the poetry and letters of Amalia Guglielminetti.
Item
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Title
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The nomad subject: An introduction to the poetry and letters of Amalia Guglielminetti.
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Identifier
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AAI3205009
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identifier
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3205009
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Creator
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Auriti, Sabbia.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Peter Carravetta
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Date
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2006
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, Comparative | Literature, Romance | Women's Studies | Language, Modern
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Abstract
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This dissertation focuses on a close reading of the poetic production of the Italian poet Amalia Guglielminetti (1881--1941), an author largely ignored by academic criticism during the past half-century. The thematic analysis is conducted with reference to the extensive correspondence between Guglielminetti and the poet Guido Gozzano from 1907 to 1912. In order to facilitate the reading, the dissertation is equipped with two Appendices, one containing the poems, the other the letters, in the original Italian followed by first-time translations into English.;The critical analysis is inspired by the work of Rosi Braidotti, Elaine Showalter, and other feminists, and begins with a definition of "nomad," a term Guglielminetti used to describe herself on a personal level and as a poet. This approach highlights the ex-centricity of a poet who lives at the beginning of the 20th century when the issue of the "new woman" was at the core of political and social debate in Italy.;Guglielminetti's ex-centricity is supported by biographical information on her lifestyle. As the author essays to move from the margin to the center in search of her subjectivity, we discover that her nomadism is binary. Reading her poetic production in conjunction with her letters demonstrates that, on the one hand, Guglielminetti as a woman is relentless in her search for love and acceptance by men, thus subjecting herself to the manipulation of a patriarchal society which sought to reaffirm the immobility of the woman by demanding that she conform to a male-dominated literary canon. As a result, she is entrapped into what we may call a sphere of immanence. Concurrently, on the other hand, we witness the evolution of the woman-artist, the producer of culture who although defined initially as the object (or, as Simone De Beauvoir defines it, as the "other"), succeeds through her poetic work in achieving a fully self-conscious subjectivity and therefore inhabits a sphere of transcendence. In Guglielminetti, the nomadic self is also bi-vocal: the register of the woman's voice is that of a proud yet pleading, lamenting, rejected lover, while the register of her poetic voice transcends gender barriers, incorporates the canon, and speaks as a fully self-validating subject.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
