The Comedies of Grazia Pierantoni Mancini ����� 11
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Table of contents Antonella Cagnolati Introduction: such rebellious inks ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 7 Antonella Cagnolati Educating the “new women”: the comedies of Grazia Pierantoni Mancini ����� 11 Dorena Caroli Ludmila Durdíková, teacher and writer for children from Prague to Paris (1899–1955) ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 25 Ada Boubara Penelope Delta: the most leading figure in Greek children’s literature ������������ 45 Lucia Perrone Capano Rebellious little girls: Irmgard Keun’s Grown-Ups Don’t Understand and Child of All Nations ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 53 Leonor Sáez Méndez Islands: hopes, trials and tribulations in the stories of Hermynia Zur Mühlen and Mira Lobe ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 67 Veronica Pacheco Costa Suffragist plays in the UK and in the USA: propaganda and political texts to protect children and young ladies ����������������������������������������������������������� 87 Monika Woźniak A feminine touch: Hanna Januszewska as cultural mediator in Poland for Charles Perrault’s fairy tales ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 101 Beatrice Wilke “Language is the most important thing”: Christine Nöstlinger’s children’s and youth books in the mirror of their Italian and English translation ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 117 6 Table of contents Vanessa Castagna Ethical and aesthetic experience in Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen’s children’s literature ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� 141 Irena Prosenc Animals and fantastic creatures in Svetlana Makarovič’s fairy tales ��������������� 155 Chiara Lepri Crossing Scylla and Charybdis: Nadia Terranova child writer between autobiography, gender consciousness and fairy tale ����������������������������������������� 171 Antonella Cagnolati Introduction Such rebellious inks 1. How quickly they learn! During the cold nights of winter, sheltered in stalls heated by the precious live- stock, a small community huddled around the ancient storyteller, wise conser- vator of the stories passed down through the generations; she told of sleeping princesses and brave heroes, of evil wolves and disobedient children, woven through the fabric of tales that ably transfigured their daily lives and gifted them a magically positive version of their own destiny, with its inevitable happy ending� The hardships of daily life could acquire meaning only in a rarefied dimension in which every single tale held the possibility of a solution, brought about by magic, helpers, or objects that provided a valid aid to the protagonist in difficulty, as well we know from the analytical research by Vladimir Propp� The word surpassed reality, distilling it into rivers of positivity and sagacity, opening the door to the realisation of the most secret dreams – escape from the village, marrying the prince, killing the dragon – giving each of the listeners the capacity to dream of other worlds in which they took on another identity� The main architects of such metamorphoses were, in every place and at every time, the women; attuned to the universal and meta-historical passages of exis- tence – birth, procreation, death – caretakers of mysteries, wise healers and mistresses of the herbs, they were present in the community and knew its rituals; they guarded its genealogies and witnessed its events� Each mastered the subtle art of spinning tales, like precious fabrics; in the guise of small, hardworking Penelopes, they traced their designs, refining them and gifting them to the col- lective as the sum of folkloric eschatology, interiorised by everyone and trea- sured above all in their hearts, through the emotion of experience, and in their minds, to capitalise on their wise teachings� I am driven to underscore with emphasis to what extent the role of the sto- ryteller (and able wordsmith) enabled women to break the compulsory silence that the misogynist patriarchal societal model had relegated them to since time out of mind; the limen was crossed, like a difficult ford, and they entered a public sphere in which words took on a haloed magic� Narrative virtuosity enabled the cuntrici to take on a role in society that was acknowledged and admired by all� 8 Antonella Cagnolati From the spoken word to the written, the step is revealed in all its tortuous dif- ficulty� When we think of the world of books aimed at children, our imagina- tion flies towards the brothers Grimm, capable listeners of the tales told by the women of a more humble, more folkloric Germany� Nevertheless, the brothers were soon followed by an army of female writers who mastered the difficult art of putting words onto paper, to take their turn to tell the stories they had heard, or ably reinvented� In the middle of the 19th century, the panorama changed rapidly� The female storytellers became visible; they published their stories in magazines, and targeted a new publishing market that evolved into what we know today as “children’s literature”� Following in the footsteps of their forerunner, Jeanne- Marie Leprince de Beaumont (1711–1780), author of La Belle et la Bête – a tale that we now have no hesitation in labelling a worldwide success – and undis- puted authority in the age of Enlightenment, ranks of female writers decided to set out on their own journeys� At first they walked hesitantly, and then with more boldness and determination, overturning the trope of caretaking that was held to be the traditional preserve of the “weaker sex” to carve themselves out a place in the world of publishing� This was a new world that they were unfamiliar with, and it could be merciless with those who did not master the rules� This is attested to by the numerous letters between authors and editors that reveal the darker side of those relationships, which were not always friendly and egalitarian; the women themselves were oppressed by financial necessities and hostile reviews by the critics, while the editors were driven by the demands of the market and the school, not to mention the textbook review boards and the need to ensure their own tidy profits� The trend, however, was widely evident; the women writers learned quickly, produced much, and found favour with the public� One best-seller followed another, confirming that it is the readers rather than the editors who determine the fate of a book: Louisa May Alcott and Little Women (1868), a real master- work, as relevant today as it was when it was written; Ida Baccini and Memorie di un pulcino (1875), read by many generations of scholars and continuously republished to the present day; Contessa Lara and Una famiglia di topi (1895); Edith Nesbit and The Railway Children (1906); Frances Hodgson Burnett and The Secret Garden (1911); Pamela Lyndon Travers and Mary Poppins (1934); Astrid Lindgren and Pippi Långstrump (1945); Ann Philippa Pearce and Tom’s Midnight Garden (1958); Ursula K� Le Guin and Earthsea, Cornelia Funke and Tintenwelt-Trilogie (2003); and so on, and so on, until we reach the most famous, and much loved, J�K� Rowling� Introduction 9 2. What do they write to become so famous? Let us make haste, then, to investigate what were the most important themes that made the women writers discussed in this volume so famous� I will subdivide the discussion into several categories that appear to me to be the most repre- sentative, those which constitute the fertile soil that shaped their output, both in terms of content and the underlying ideals that were knowingly incorporated into their writing� First and foremost, a trait shared by all is without doubt the willingness to rebel against the roles and stereotypes that bind and constrain, as if in a cage, the protagonists of the novels; this was often a rebellion that was expressed and determinedly explicit even through physical appearance and clothing – messy, dishevelled, unfashionable and even dirty – but is even more apparent from their reflections and musings, which stand out in stark contrast to the conventions universally accepted by the society in which they found themselves living; conventions that they were largely unable to understand, certainly did not con- done, and whose hypocritical conformism they rejected� The girls, the main characters and protagonists of the stories, were living in a time of transition that delineated new behavioural models but had nevertheless not abandoned the old and obsolete clichés, strenuously defended by the reassuring traditions that the triumphant bourgeoisie clung to at the turn of the 20th century� Emblematic in this regard is the figure of the young rebel in Das Mädchen, mit dem die Kinder nicht verkehren durften by Imgard Keun, or, we find equally interesting, the char- acter of Pouloudia in Τρελαντώνης by Penelope Delta; both wilfully smash the stereotypes upon which social injustice – spawned by rigid class, race, gender and socioeconomic distinctions – was based� Rebellion is a spiritual category that was represented in their work precisely because they had experienced it in real life, and therefore another piece in the critical analysis consists of comparing the often problematic existence of the authors with the fictional lives of their heroines� As if reflected in a mirror we can