Daria Valentini and Paola Caru, eds. Beyond Artemisia: Female Subjectivity, History, and Culture in Anna Banti.

Daria Valentini and Paola Caru, eds. Beyond Artemisia: Female Subjectivity, History, and Culture in Anna Banti. Chapel Hill, NC: Annali d'Italianisrica, 2003.

Comprised of an introduction, four sections and concluding remarks, this volume of essays provides a multifaceted inquiry into Anna Banti's oeuvre. As the title suggests, the collection aims to dispel "the notion that Banti's success can be measured by the popularity of Artemisia alone" (1). The contributors employ a variety of critical approaches and points of view to investigate the fundamental issue of female identity and subjectivity in Banti's narrative. They also examine the treatment of history and autobiography, Banti's rapport with feminism and her role as a cultural figure.

The construction of female identity and subjectivity are the focus of the first set of essays. Based on Banti's collections of short stories, Il coraggio delle donne (1940) and Le donne muoiono (1951), Ursula J. Fanning identifies three categories of female subjects: the ordinary woman caught in her traditional role of wife and/or mother; the exceptional, creative heroine; and a third category of women who lack a real vocation and as such bear the brunt of Banti's disdain and contempt. Whatever the path they have chosen, these female characters "represent a sense of fracture and division within the self" (25), and share a destiny of marginalization, estrangement and solitude. Banti's stance toward the female dilettante and the exceptional woman is further investigated by Tommasina Gabriele in her study of Il bastardo (1953) through the characters of donna Elisa and Cecilia. Issues of legitimacy and illegitimacy, as well as that of transgression against societal norms by way of mask and disguise, are explored to expose the reality behind public opinion and social respectability and to debunk the myth of the nuclear family. In the last essay, Daria Valentini underscores the relational aspect of female identity through bonding and friendship and looks into its impact on the construct of female identity: "It is only in relation to other women that Banti's main characters ultimately shape their identity, confronting the challenge of forming multiple bonds while maintaining a degree of separation" (50). However, significant relationships are difficult to establish because, in Banti, friendship "assumes mythical qualifies pertaining to a utopian world more than everyday life" (59).

The two essays in the second section are devoted to Banti's treatment of history. Cristina della Coletta focuses on the fictionalized political memoir Noi credevamo (1967), arguing that Banti redefined the genres of biography and historical fiction. By proposing a new form of selfhood which subverts acquired notions of subjectivity as a monolithic, unified entity, and by refuting the official Risorgimento historiography that favored a homogeneous and idealized narrative of the creation of the Italian State, the protagonist creates in his memoir "a view that not only alters the historical record, but problematizes what ultimately constitutes subjectivity as well as historical knowledge" (69). Historical narrative considered from a deconstructionist perspective is the focus of Sharon Wood's essay. Looking specifically at La camicia bruciata (1973), Banti's fictional biography of Marguerite d'Orleans, Wood remarks that Banti's goal was not the rehabilitation of Marguerite's reputation, but rather "the aesthetic renovation of biography as art form" (90). The use of multiple points of view and alternative versions of events, the juxtaposition of different temporal planes, and the reliance on hidden clues to subvert established values and to offer alternative female role models suggest "interpretative strategies in the manner of modernism" that "deconstruct the very notion of historical event in the manner of postmodernism" (94).

The first essay in the third section concentrates on Banti's rapport with feminism. Paola Caru examines Banti's claims to non-feminism within the context of the author's fiction and non-fiction. After identifying feminist features--the values expressed by her characters, the use of irony to denounce patriarchy, the importance of maternage, and the ties with intellectual women, both contemporary and historical, Caru concludes that Banti's contradictory attitude leads to a feminism that "expresses itself in practice rather than through ideological positions" (131). Banti's stance is characteristic of that of many of other contemporary women writers and is due to the author's refusal to be labeled and to her sense of privacy. Autobiographical writing is the subject of the second essay. Based on her study of Itinerario di Paolina (1937) and Un grido lacerante (1985), Banti's first and last works, Bernadette Luciano contends that avoidance of first-person narration "is clearly linked to [Banti's] search of discursive authority," and stems from a "fear that her works would be relegated to the sub-category of 'women's writing'" (134). Framing the issue in terms of autography versus autobiography, Luciano argues that the writing itself becomes an aspect of the construction of female subjectivity. Hence, Banti's experimentation with different writing styles reveals "the writer's evolving relationship with herself and with the act of writing" (143). In the final essay, Laura Benedetti evaluates Banti's thirty-five year directorship of the journal Paragone Letteratura. Banti's evolving attitudes toward literary trends are chronicled against the background of the articles she wrote in the "Appunti" section of the journal. Banti became increasingly critical of contemporary literature, claims Benedetti, because she believed that "most current works were artificial products of the cultural industry" (152). In addition to Banti's role as a cultural figure in Italian intellectual life, Benedetti comments on ber position regarding feminism, on the significance of friendship in her narrative and on her literary models--Manzoni, Woolf and Colette.

Several of the issues addressed in the volume are revisited in the concluding essay, an homage to Banti's life and career. Grazia Livi, who knew Banti personally (she benefited from her literary maternage) aims in her essay to add a human dimension to the author's contributions. However, more than anything else, it is the author's singularity that emerges through Livi's personal account as she reminds the readers that Banti was an "exceptional" woman, "majestic and fearless" (177), like her heroine Artemisia.

Copy editing errors notwithstanding, this is an excellent volume. Well-researched and informative, it sheds new light on one of Italy's greatest women writers while increasing our understanding of the broader Italian literary culture of the twentieth century.

LOUISE ROZIER

University of Arkansas