Elsa Morante and the Politics of Writing: Rethinking Subjectivity, History and the Power of Art

With this pioneering volume, Lucamante stimulates a postmodernist reading of the works of the canonical Italian writer Elsa Morante (1912–1985), especially her novels Menzogna e sortilegio (1948), La storia (1974), and Aracoeli (1982). The volume brings together international scholars and specialists with distinct backgrounds and diverse perspectives on Morante’s works and their adaptations (in cinema and in other visual arts). Lucamante organizes the 21 essays into four main parts: these focus on new approaches to the author’s works and related criticism, adaptations of Morante’s works, queer analysis, and Morante's critical essays. The book as a whole takes into consideration not only Morante’s published fictional texts and essays but also archived works now open to the public. Including analyses of the writer’s vision of history, the presence of Kafka in her writings, her conception of sexuality, her contribution to Rome’s intellectual life, and her artistic relationships with certain Italian intellectuals and philosophers, this volume is among the most comprehensive and interdisciplinary studies on Morante ever published. It will be of interest for Italian, gender, queer, and film adaptation studies as well as comparative literature. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. (from CHOICE)