Using the mythical figure of Gradiva, Blum shows how contemporary Italian women writers have reinvented Gradiva to reveal subjectivities that challenge and overcome the postmodern melancholia and nihilism prevalent in contemporary male writers and thinkers. She also considers the connection between metaphorical and literal mobility, the role of the intellectual as cultural intermediary, the roles of women in cultural encounters within mass migrations, and how migrancy is a way of being in the postcolonial world.
An impeccable piece of original scholarship, Rewriting the Journey in Contemporary Italian Literature will be of interest to feminist, literary, and postcolonial scholars.
Cinzia Sartini Blum is an associate professor in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Iowa.