Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Psychoanalytic Accounts of Sexual Difference: Luce Irigaray and Italian Feminism
The Denial of the Mother
The Mother Figure and the Maternal
Irigaray: Subjectivity and the Mother-Daughter Corporeal Bond
From Mothers to Daughters: The Italian Scene
Diotima and Luisa Muraro
Adriana Cavarero
2 Elsa Morante’s Menzogna e sortilegio: The Incorporeal Bond
Menzogna e sortilegio and the Critics
Motherhood and the Mother-Daughter Relationship: Cesira and Anna
Maternal Love: Rosaria and Alessandra
Elisa
3 Francesca Sanvitale’s Madre e figlia: Bodies of Pain and Imagination
Body as Object of Desire
The Male Hero
Medical Establishment: The Attack on the Body
Critique and Re-imagining
Writing, Imagination, and Language
Narrator, Character, and Author in Search of Identity
4 Mariateresa Di Lascia’s Passaggio in ombra: The Maternal as Expression of Desire and Corporeality
Desire
Chiara
The Daughter within the Heterosexual Economy
Body and Knowledge
5 Elena Ferrante’s L’amore molesto: The Renegotiation of the Mother’s Body
Delia: The Love and Hatred of a Selfless Subject
Reconstructing the Past
The Language of Dresses
6 Elena Stancanelli’s Benzina: The Surreal Mother-Daughter Relationship and New Possibilities
Elena Stancanelli and the Literary Scene, 1995–2000
Benzina 154
Mother and Daughter: Different Bodies, Different Personalities
A Relationship of Fusion and Independence
Oppressed Bodies in the Family Home
Looking, and Looking at Each Other
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
