Women have had a long and active role in Italian letters. This reference work contains biographical, critical, and bibliographical profiles of 51 writers from the 14th century to the present day. The entries are written by contributors knowledgeable of the historical period in which their chosen writers lived, and reflect both the literary tradition that conditioned their works and the modern gender issues that have shaped contemporary critical interpretation.

For easy reference, the entries in this volume are organized alphabetically and have a uniform format. The first section of each...

Over the last 20 years, there has been an increasing interest in feminist views of the Italian literary tradition. While feminist theory and methodology have been accepted by the academic community in the U.S., the situation is very different in Italy, where such work has been done largely outside the academy. Among nonspecialists, knowledge of feminist approaches to Italian literature, and even of the existence of Italian women writers, remains scant. This reference work, the first of its kind on Italian literature, is a companion volume for all who wish to investigate Italian literary...