Centre de Recherches Italiennes – CRIX) Dalla parte delle scrittrici: Alba de Céspedes

Abstract

What should remain of the literary 20th century? Despite the efforts made, particularly in the last decades of the last century, by feminists and intellectuals to re-evaluate the works of unjustly marginalized women writers, the current canon still does not give them the prominent place they deserve. Dalla parte di lei (1949), by Alba de Céspedes, represents singular, but not individual, case of novels by women writers which, despite having been well received by the public and the critics when it came out seem to have fallen into oblivion. Despite the recent revival, particularly in the field of feminist criticism, which allowed de Céspedes’ work to be published in the Meridiani (2011), the writer’s novels remain little read and little studied. This article aims to highlight their formal and content-related qualities that should make them reference works of the 20th century.