<i>Una donna</i>: Autobiography as Exemplary Text

Abstract

Since its debut in 1906, Sibilla Aleramo's Una donna has been interpreted as a book which is simultaneously autobiography and novel, confession and paradigm, personal and universal. Starting with the earliest reviews, some critics have focused on its factual matrix and interiority, while others have highlighted its feminist message. Arturo Graf proposed that piu che di un romanzo, ha carattere di giornale intimo' while, seventy-five years later, Olga Lombardi would declare that si tratta di una lunga, appassionata confessione in cui l'autrice rifa la storia della propria vita (737). At the same