This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from Explore Bristol Research, http://research-information.bristol.ac.uk Author: Lee, Joanne Sarah Title: Representations of travel and displacement in the work of contemporary Italian women writers General rights Access to the thesis is subject to the Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International Public License. A copy of this may be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode This license sets out your rights and the restrictions that apply to your access to the thesis so it is important you read this before proceeding. Take down policy Some pages of this thesis may have been removed for copyright restrictions prior to having it been deposited in Explore Bristol Research. However, if you have discovered material within the thesis that you consider to be unlawful e.g. breaches of copyright (either yours or that of a third party) or any other law, including but not limited to those relating to patent, trademark, confidentiality, data protection, obscenity, defamation, libel, then please contact [email protected] and include the following information in your message: •Your contact details •Bibliographic details for the item, including a URL •An outline nature of the complaint Your claim will be investigated and, where appropriate, the item in question will be removed from public view as soon as possible. Representations of Travel and Displacement in the Work of Contemporary Italian Women Writers Joanne Sarah Lee A dissertation subtnitted to the Uni\·ersity of Bristol in accordance \\ ith the rcquiren1cnts or the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of :\rts, Departtnent of Ital ian. October 2007. \\'ord Count: 80~7X ABSTRACT Scholars of Italian literature have pointed to the low status afforded to tra\el \\Titin~ and. until comparatively recently. the marginalisation of women' s \\Titing ..\s ; consequence, female-authored accounts of travel have suffered a doubl~-in\"isibilit\' which this thesis seeks to address by providing an indication of the scope of rec~~t work on travel by Italian women, the variety of generic forms their \\Titing assumes. and the wide range of issues that their texts confront. Its methodology derives from approaches to identity which are broadly post-structuralist in that identity is seen as being located in the articulations of the self or in its performance. The thesis looks at writings on travel as texts in which the author assumes a series of subject positions in relation to home and host cultures. Though the thesis discusses a \vide range of k:\ts by contemporary Italian women, its primary focus is on the notion of self that emerges from their texts. The first chapter discusses how childhood memories of Italy's colonial past are interrogated in the semi-autobiographical novels of Erminia Dell 'Oro. The connection between place and identity is analysed in the second chapter through the problematic notion of home in Laura Pariani' s fictionalized portrayal of women emigrants in Argentina and in the private memoirs of \\'omen migrants to South America. Travel and displacement coalesce in the writings of Bamboo Hirst whose performative construction of cultural identity is a response to her sense of estrangement from both China and Italy. The fourth chapter discusses three women's exploration of the religious dimension of another culture. It looks at the postmodern sense of self that emerges from the introspective accounts of journeys through India undertaken by Sandra Petrignani, Francesca De Carolis and Alcssandra Borghese. The final chapter examines the writings of three prominent Italian journalists, Oriana Fallaci. Lilli Gruber and Giuliana Sgrena, and argues that the way they conceptualise their own identity in their writing leads to vcry different inkrpretations of cultures of the Near East. The accounts of travel discussed represent journeys into the self in which the traveller becomes aware of the processes that constitute identity and the way in which social and cultural structures impinge upon the workings of subjectivity. DEDICATION to Suzanne Lee and Angela Brown .. 11 ACKNOWLEGEMENTS It is inevitable that a thesis on travel writing will, at some point, make reference to the author's personal journey. My journey through Italian studies started as an undergraduate in Cardiff back in 1995 and I am extremely grateful that those persons who motivated and inspired me at such an early stage are still very much a part of that ongoing journey today. First, I would like to acknowledge the enormous debt I owe to my supervisor, Dr. Charles Burdett, who has spent considerable time discussing and reviewing my work and offering constructive advice. I particularly appreciate the help he has provided during the final stages in guiding me towards completion of the thesis. I also wish to thank all members of staff in the Italian Department at Bristol University for their support, and I especially valued the comments and suggestions that Professor Derek Duncan offered on drafts of the first three chapters. For financial assistance, I wish to thank the Faculty of Arts at Bristol University for the studentship which enabled me to complete my research. Vanna Motta was an important influence in my decision to leave Parma and return to postgraduate study and I am grateful for her continued support. Many thanks also to Guyda Armstrong for her words of encouragement, proofreading services and, of course, those invaluable morning-coffees. I also appreciated the help and assistance of the staff at the Archivio Diaristico, Pieve Santo Stefano, notably Loretta Veri, Cristina Cangi, and Daniela Brighigni. And finally, warmest thanks to my friends in Italy and in Britain for their patience and understanding over the last four years and to my parents for providing that start and end point of travel: a place to call home. 111 AUTHOR'S DECLARATION I declare that the work in this dissertation was carried out in accordance with the Regulations of the University of Bristol. The work is original, except where indicated by special reference in the text, and no part of the dissertation has been submitted for any other academic award. Any views expressed in the dissertation are those of the author. SIGNED: .. ~.•. ~.~ •.•.•. DATE: .... 4 ....~ .. ~ IV CO:\TE~TS Introduction 1 Travel: its meanings and moti\'ations Migration in and out of Italy 5 The fluidity and fortunes of the genre 8 Travel, identity and place 16 Women and travel 21 Representations of travel and displacement 27 Chapter 1: Revisiting Italy's Colonial Past: Erminia Dell'Oro's 38 Representations of Eritrea Introduction: remembering the colonial past 38 Mai Tacli and Marisa Baratti 47 Asmara addio La Gola del Diavolo 71 Conclusion 80 Chapter 2: Writing Home: Images of Home and Displacement in Italian 83 Women's Memories of South America Introduction: the meaning of home 83 Italian migration to South America 91 Laura Pariani, Quando Dio balla\'([ it fango 93 Maria Antonietta Garetto, OxaliI 106 Carlina Lorenzini, 11 rilOrno 116 Pia Ferrante, Quando Ie ombre si allungano 121 Conclusion: the trauma of homelessness 127 Chapter 3: Cultural Competencies and the Performance of Cultural 129 Identity in Bamboo Hirst's Bill Cina Introduction: a sense of uprootedness 129 Bamboo Hirst. Blu Cina 131 The representation of a diYided self 140 t\ performati\e construction of cultural identity 148 <.. 'onclusion: the limits of identity 164 ('hllptt.'r 4: Postmodcrn Pilgrims'? The journeys through India of Sandra 168 Pl'trignalli, Francesc~l Dc Carolis and Ail'ssandra Borghc,c Introduction: the allure of India 108 rill' moti\'l.ltion of the joun1ey 175 I'hl' culture l)r origin 181 rhl' qUl'st for authenticity ISh \ The literary dimensions of travel 193 The failure of the journey 195 Conclusion: the postmodern traveller 205 Chapter 5: Conceptualisations of Identity in Oriana Fallaci, Lilli Gruber 208 and Giuliana Sgrena's Representations of the Near East Travel writing and journalism 208 Oriana Fallaci's polemic 215 Lilli Gruber's dialogue with the Near East 224 Giuliana Sgrena: a pacifist in a war zone 239 Conclusions 246 Conclusion 249 The travel writing genre 249 Autobiography 253 The identity of the traveller 254 Memory and time 259 Types of space 262 The representation of Italian history 264 Writing the self / Writing the journey 267 Bibliography 269 Illustrations: Figure 1. Bamboo Hirst, II mondo ollre iljiume de; pesch; ;njiore (p. 246) 161 \,1 INTRODUCTION TRA VEL: ITS MEANINGS AND MOTIVATIONS In recent years there has been an ever-increasing body of work devoted to travel and travel writing, from anthologies of travel texts, collections of critical essays and theoretical works that interrogate the concept of travel. James Duncan and Derek Gregory have referred to this phenomenon as an 'explosion of interest in travel writing'. I Many such critical studies begin by taking issue with Paul Fussell's claim that real travel is no longer possible? According to Fussell, there can be no authentic, in the sense of unmediated, way of experiencing an elsewhere as, he claims, places are now packaged and offered to the tourist as commodities in an already interpreted form. Rather than travel as an encounter with the exotic, he alleges that global tourism has led to an erasure of difference. As a result, modem-day tourists are presented with instantly recognizable sites in places which replicate the comforting familiarities of home and they are encouraged not to see and interpret but to spend and consume. In his assertion that 'before tourism there was travel, and before travel there was exploration' and by defining travel as a bourgeois phenomenon whilst associating tourism with the proletariat, Fussell constructs a hierarchy of travelling activities and presents what is arguably a confined definition of what actually constitutes travel.