Title: Public history, private stories
First published: 1996
Description: In this important volume, Graziella Parati examines the ways in which Italian women writers articulate their identities through autobiography - a public act that is also the creation of a private life. Considering autobiographical writings by five women writers from the seventeenth century to the present, Parati draws important connections between self-writing and the debate over women's roles, both traditional and transgressive.

Parati considers the first prose autobiography written by an Italian woman - Camilla Faa Gonzaga's 1622 memoir - as her beginning point, citing it as a central "pre-text." Parati then examines the autobiographies of Enif Robert, Fausta Cialente, Rita Levi Montalcini, and Luisa Passerini.

Through her discussion of these women's writings, she demonstrates the complex negotiations over identity contained within them, negotiations that challenge dichotomies between male and female, maternal and paternal, and private and public. Public History, Private Stories is a compelling exploration of the disparate identities created by these women through the act of writing autobiography.
Subjects: Women authors, Autobiography, Privacy in literature, History and criticism, Women and literature, Public opinion in literature, Italian prose literature, Women in literature, Italian literature, women authors, Italian literature, history and criticism, Prose italienne, Histoire et critique, Écrits de femmes italiens, Écrits de femmes autobiographiques, LITERARY CRITICISM, European, Italian, Autobiografieën, Italiaans, Vrouwelijke auteurs, Italian literature, Autobiography in literature
Places: Italy
LC classification: PQ4055.W6 P37 1996