Forms, Fragments and Fractures in Contemporary Women’s Life Writing: Spain, Portugal, and Italy
- Event type
- Seminar
- Address
- Online
- Speakers
- Álvaro González Montero (University of Leeds), Maria Pereira Branco (University of Oxford), Vilma de Gasperin (University of Oxford)
- Event dates
- Contact
- ilcs@sas.ac.uk .
Postmodern Autobiographies (1975-2000)
Álvaro González Montero (University of Leeds): ‘Cristina de Areilza’s Diario de una rebeldía: “writing the inner Monster”’
Maria Pereira Branco (University of Oxford): “Revolution Within and Without: The Transformative Power of Life-Writing in Natália Correia’s Não Percas a Rosa”
Vilma de Gasperin (University of Oxford): ‘Autobiography as Invention of the Self in Anna Maria Ortese: 1930s-1950s and Beyond’
Álvaro González Montero (University of Leeds), ‘Cristina de Areilza’s Diario de una rebeldía: “writing the inner Monster”’
Cristina de Areilza was beginning her journalistic career in Spain in the early 1980s when she was diagnosed with leukaemia. Then, the author decided to write a diary about the process of her illness to “help many people who […] have gone through or are currently living similar situations” (p. 15), emphasising both the physical phenomenology of illness as well as the psychological one. Indeed, Pedro Laín Entralgo’s prologue points at the psychoanalytic concept of “transference” as key for understanding de Areilza’s work. This presentation undertakes a close reading of several passages of this diary to situate the epistemological coordinates of de Areilza’s experience of illness. Through the lens of psychoanalysis, feminism and queer theory, I plot the influences of Diario de una rebeldía and its sociopolitical importance within the early years of the Spanish transition to democracy.
Maria Pereira Branco (University of Oxford), “Revolution Within and Without: The Transformative Power of Life-Writing in Natália Correia’s Não Percas a Rosa”
Natália Correia, the most censored female writer during Portugal’s oppressive 'New State' regime (1933–1974), consistently fought for freedom through her writing and public stances, often directly criticizing the regime. Her diary Não Percas a Rosa, which begins on the day of the April 25th Revolution in 1974, chronicles both the historical events following the revolution and her concurrent inner transformation. Correia’s account extends beyond public events, incorporating the social and cultural dynamics of her bar, O Botequim, a prominent hub for political and intellectual exchange. Correia’s critique of the constraints on freedom did not wane after the fall of the New State. In her diary, she addresses the precariousness of freedom, warning against the rise of Soviet totalitarianism and reflecting on the politically turbulent "Hot Summer" of 1975. This paper explores the transformative power of life-writing, demonstrating how the historical upheaval that prompted Correia’s diary also served as a catalyst for introspection and personal revolution. Through an intimate and reflective lens, Correia’s narrative reveals how life-writing can interrogate the self, propelling an “inner revolution”.
Vilma de Gasperin (University of Oxford), ‘Autobiography as Invention of the Self in Anna Maria Ortese: 1930s-1950s and Beyond’
Anna Maria Ortese (1914-1998) wrote short stories, reportages, essays, poems and six novels, three of which are autobiographical. Il porto di Toledo (1975) depicts the story of Damasa Figuera in the city of Toledo, a hispanized transfiguration of Naples, from her teenage years in the 1930s to the Second World War. Poveri e semplici (1967) and Il cappello piumato (1979) tell the story of Bettina in Milan in the 1950s. These three novels portray a woman writer and her personal, literary, intellectual journey in a dramatically changing society, marked by fascism and the destruction of the war in Naples, and by post-war ideological and political ferment in Milan. These works adopt autobiography as a mode of ‘invention’ and ‘addition’, where the protagonist is an ‘invented’ self or an independent ‘fragment’ of the author. This paper examines how Ortese’s autobiographical writing acts as a form of literary invention of the self, a portrait of survival against dire economic struggles in an ideologically conflicted society, and of resistance against ‘this philosophical darkness in which we live’. It argues that Ortese’s autobiographical fiction speaks not only of her narrated alter ego in the past, but also of the writer and of the times of narration.
All are welcome to attend this seminar, held online via zoom at 4.30pm GMT/5.30pm CET . Please register in advance to receive the booking link, by clicking Book Now at the top of this page.
Series convenors:
Raquel Fernández Menéndez (University of Salamanca)
Hannie Lawlor (University of Oxford)
This series explores the diverse forms that women’s life writing has taken in the shifting socio-political contexts of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Southern Europe. It draws into dialogue works from three countries that remain underrepresented in Anglophone discussions and theorisations of life writing and whose twentieth-century history is marked by dictatorship: Spain, Portugal, and Italy. Taking a comparative approach, the series seeks to demonstrate the richness and importance of these autobiographical practices and to explore the relationship between formal choices and contextual challenges. Through the focus on ‘forms’, ‘fractures’ and ‘fragments’, it considers the evolution of life-writing practices alongside socio-political developments and investigates how the slippages, divergences, and obfuscations that have contributed to the underrepresentation of these literatures in autobiography theory to date might in fact broaden the methodological and theoretical frameworks for the analysis of life-writing across different national and cultural contexts. Proceeding chronologically, the five sessions move from the turn of the twentieth century to the present day, considering representations of the self across memoirs and magazines, diaries and autofictional experiments. By comparing contexts and case studies between as well as within sessions, the series considers how women’s narratives of the self are transformed by the changing constraints on and new possibilities of expression across the period, and the alternative perspectives that these self-representations offer, in turn, on what we recognise as and understand by life writing today.
The series builds on the success of previous comparative initiatives developed at the CCWW, such as Un/Doing Queerness in the European South: Crises/Critique/Grammars of Resistance, and on the interest in French- and English-language autobiographical writing at past CCWW conferences and events. In making Spain and Portugal a central focus, as well as Italy, it turns the spotlight on languages and contexts that have featured less or not at all in seminar series to date. It also dedicates one session to women’s life writing in minority and minoritised languages in Spain, showcasing the importance these literatures hold for international discussions of autobiographical practices and gender theory.
PROGRAMME
6 March 2025
Fragmented Autobiographies (1900-1936)
Ursula Fanning (University College Dublin): ‘Sibilla Aleramo: Fracturing Forms, Negotiating Self-Representations’
Xon de Ros (Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford): ‘Filiation through Affiliation: Mother-Daughter Bond in C20th Women's Autobiography’
Christina Bezari (Université Libre de Bruxelles): ‘Fractured Lives: Women’s Biographies in Iberian Avant-Garde Periodicals (1915–1936)’
13 March 2025
Fractured Autobiographies (1936-1975)
Cláudia Pazos Alonso (University of Oxford): ‘Life-writing as Funambulism during the Portuguese Dictatorship’
Mara Josi (University College Dublin): ‘Multifaceted, Fractured, and Torn Selves: Autobiographies of Lives in Hiding during the German Occupation of Italy’
Raquel Fernández Menéndez (University of Salamanca): ‘The Ethics of Diary Keeping: Narcissism and Vulnerability in Rosa Chacel’s Alcancía’
20 March 2025
Postmodern Autobiographies (1975-2000)
Álvaro González Montero (University of Leeds): ‘Cristina de Areilza’s Diario de una rebeldía: “writing the inner Monster”’
Maria Pereira Branco (University of Oxford): “Revolution Within and Without: The Transformative Power of Life-Writing in Natália Correia’s Não Percas a Rosa”
Vilma de Gasperin (University of Oxford): ‘Autobiography as Invention of the Self in Anna Maria Ortese: 1930s-1950s and Beyond’
27 March 2025
Minorities, Minorization and Autobiography
Maria Àngels Francés-Díez (University of Alicante): ‘Women’s Life Writing as a Reflective Surface: The Case of Four 20th-Century Catalan Women Writers’
Iker González-Allende (University of Nebraska-Lincoln): ‘Men’s Violence, Heteropatriarchal Vampirism and Feminist Community in the Memoirs of Itziar Ziga’
María Xesús Lama (Universitat de Barcelona): ‘Rosalía de Castro in Revolutionary Road. Lives that are Exploding’
3 April 2025
Twenty-First-Century Autofictions
Maite Usoz de la Fuente (University of Leicester): ‘From Singular to Collective: Cristina Fallarás’ A la puta calle (2013) and Ahora contamos nosotras (2019)’
Katrin Wehling-Giorgi (Durham University): ‘Lost Diasporic Archives: Narrating Transgenerational Trauma in Igiaba Scego’s Autofiction’
Olivia Glaze (University of Exeter): ‘Trauma Autofiction and Self-Camouflage: Remembering the End of the Portuguese Empire’
Image: Depósito comodato Colección Telefónica. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. Fotografía: Fernando Maquieira
Raquel Fernández Menéndez (University of Salamanca)
Hannie Lawlor (University of Oxford)
This series explores the diverse forms that women’s life writing has taken in the shifting socio-political contexts of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Southern Europe. It draws into dialogue works from three countries that remain underrepresented in Anglophone discussions and theorisations of life writing and whose twentieth-century history is marked by dictatorship: Spain, Portugal, and Italy. Taking a comparative approach, the series seeks to demonstrate the richness and importance of these autobiographical practices and to explore the relationship between formal choices and contextual challenges. Through the focus on ‘forms’, ‘fractures’ and ‘fragments’, it considers the evolution of life-writing practices alongside socio-political developments and investigates how the slippages, divergences, and obfuscations that have contributed to the underrepresentation of these literatures in autobiography theory to date might in fact broaden the methodological and theoretical frameworks for the analysis of life-writing across different national and cultural contexts. Proceeding chronologically, the five sessions move from the turn of the twentieth century to the present day, considering representations of the self across memoirs and magazines, diaries and autofictional experiments. By comparing contexts and case studies between as well as within sessions, the series considers how women’s narratives of the self are transformed by the changing constraints on and new possibilities of expression across the period, and the alternative perspectives that these self-representations offer, in turn, on what we recognise as and understand by life writing today.
The series builds on the success of previous comparative initiatives developed at the CCWW, such as Un/Doing Queerness in the European South: Crises/Critique/Grammars of Resistance, and on the interest in French- and English-language autobiographical writing at past CCWW conferences and events. In making Spain and Portugal a central focus, as well as Italy, it turns the spotlight on languages and contexts that have featured less or not at all in seminar series to date. It also dedicates one session to women’s life writing in minority and minoritised languages in Spain, showcasing the importance these literatures hold for international discussions of autobiographical practices and gender theory.
PROGRAMME
6 March 2025
Fragmented Autobiographies (1900-1936)
Ursula Fanning (University College Dublin): ‘Sibilla Aleramo: Fracturing Forms, Negotiating Self-Representations’
Xon de Ros (Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford): ‘Filiation through Affiliation: Mother-Daughter Bond in C20th Women's Autobiography’
Christina Bezari (Université Libre de Bruxelles): ‘Fractured Lives: Women’s Biographies in Iberian Avant-Garde Periodicals (1915–1936)’
13 March 2025
Fractured Autobiographies (1936-1975)
Cláudia Pazos Alonso (University of Oxford): ‘Life-writing as Funambulism during the Portuguese Dictatorship’
Mara Josi (University College Dublin): ‘Multifaceted, Fractured, and Torn Selves: Autobiographies of Lives in Hiding during the German Occupation of Italy’
Raquel Fernández Menéndez (University of Salamanca): ‘The Ethics of Diary Keeping: Narcissism and Vulnerability in Rosa Chacel’s Alcancía’
20 March 2025
Postmodern Autobiographies (1975-2000)
Álvaro González Montero (University of Leeds): ‘Cristina de Areilza’s Diario de una rebeldía: “writing the inner Monster”’
Maria Pereira Branco (University of Oxford): “Revolution Within and Without: The Transformative Power of Life-Writing in Natália Correia’s Não Percas a Rosa”
Vilma de Gasperin (University of Oxford): ‘Autobiography as Invention of the Self in Anna Maria Ortese: 1930s-1950s and Beyond’
27 March 2025
Minorities, Minorization and Autobiography
Maria Àngels Francés-Díez (University of Alicante): ‘Women’s Life Writing as a Reflective Surface: The Case of Four 20th-Century Catalan Women Writers’
Iker González-Allende (University of Nebraska-Lincoln): ‘Men’s Violence, Heteropatriarchal Vampirism and Feminist Community in the Memoirs of Itziar Ziga’
María Xesús Lama (Universitat de Barcelona): ‘Rosalía de Castro in Revolutionary Road. Lives that are Exploding’
3 April 2025
Twenty-First-Century Autofictions
Maite Usoz de la Fuente (University of Leicester): ‘From Singular to Collective: Cristina Fallarás’ A la puta calle (2013) and Ahora contamos nosotras (2019)’
Katrin Wehling-Giorgi (Durham University): ‘Lost Diasporic Archives: Narrating Transgenerational Trauma in Igiaba Scego’s Autofiction’
Olivia Glaze (University of Exeter): ‘Trauma Autofiction and Self-Camouflage: Remembering the End of the Portuguese Empire’
Image: Depósito comodato Colección Telefónica. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. Fotografía: Fernando Maquieira
