Liala, compagna d’ali e d’insolenze: storia del romanzo rosa in Italia

Many critical texts have devoted attention to that particular area of consumer literature that goes under the name of “romance”. Too often mistreated, the woman’s novel par excellence had to fight for long against a virulent social contempt that prevented an analysis without negative prejudices, based on its presumed belonging to a sub-genre concerning in particular women of low culture or, in the best possible way, naïve women. On the other hand, if a limit should be recognized to the romance, this is precisely in the strict segmentation of use: that romance, which is, united to the children’s literature, is defined not through the vocation of reading, but through personal details such as age and gender. If this is an undeniable aspect, with my doctoral thesis, I endevour to demonstrate that romance has its own tradition, and particular cultural and linguistic codes, having its precise scope, even if limited, in the broader history of world literature. Italy, in particular, has significantly contributed to the evolution of the genre, from the original novel of educational nature of late nineteenth century, to the stories of women’s determination at the end of the last century. Therefore, a diachronic and synchronic criterion was pursued; diachronic criterion from the point of view of temporal contextualization, which determines the more or less dramatic tone of the vicissitudes of heroine, and synchronic, where the constant fictions have been individualized, as well as variations of meaning and reason. Following the unification of Italy, great attention, immediately, right from the Introduction, was drawn to the “noble crowd” of nineteenth-century feminist novelists who tried, and very often succeeding, to trace the sad aspect of the city life of women. Unavoidable premonitory signs, this educational literature, points to the results of the first decades of the twentieth century, which turns towards an empty aestheticism, and includes a disguised meditation on the woman condition, at this point extended to all the ganglions of Italian society. It is exactly at this point, the moment in which the feminine novel seemed to have taken a road with no way out, full of cynical pleasure seekers and femmes fatales, nice one-dimensional characters for every occasion, that witnesses the advent of a young writer really capable of “scribbling” the papers: Liala, precisely. .. [edited by Author]