La Bella Research Articles

Primo Levi's The Princess in the Fridge

The paper discusses the similarities between Primo Levi's documentary novel Se questo è un uomo (1947) and his short science fiction story La bella addormentata nel frigo from the collection Storie naturali (1966), on the basis of the themes of the novel. The concentration camps form an element of continuity between the novel, which bears witness to the horrors Levi experienced, and the seemingly light-hearted story. There are many parallels between human perversion documented in the novel and the grotesque experiment of the ‘Laboratory of evil’ seen in the fictional work. The story is almost a parody of Auschwitz; dreadful seriousness is converted to comedy. Patricia, the protagonist of the short story, is Levi's alter ego and a caricature of the Sleeping Beauty archetype from the traditional fairy tale.

Medellín como una representación de la decadencia de Colombia en Casablanca la bella de Fernando Vallejo

The article analyses the representation of Medellín in Fernando Vallejo’s 2013 novel Casablanca la bella in the context of Zygmunt Bauman’s liquid modernity concept and other cultural theories of the urban, which can be applied to Colombia in the context of omnipresence of violence. The analysis proves that the narrator-protagonist, disappointed with the modernity in Colombian context, is incapable of accepting the changes that the city as well as the country have suffered during his life and uses the descriptions of the urban space for social criticism. The conclusion is that the narrator-protagonist obsessively tries to re-actualize the past and persists in linking to it as he does not see any point of reference in the present nor any positive perspective for Colombia in a foreseeable future.

Straightening Agentic Women: The "Willful" Princess in Contemporary Fairy-Tale Picturebooks

Feminist scholars have criticized the misogyny of folk/fairy tales that recount how "willful" princesses who refuse to marry are reformed or punished. As a result, contemporary authors of fairy-tale picturebooks tend to alter or not incorporate the forced marriage theme when engaging with these tales. Yet, the trope of the "willful" princess whose will is "straightened" is still operative in recent fairy tales. Through a multimodal analysis of La bella Griselda (Beautiful Griselda, 2010) and De gouden kooi (The Golden Cage,2014), I show how these fairy-tale picturebooks reiterate the harmful dynamic of reforming or penalizing a "willfully" agentic princess.

María Teresa León

Abstract This article examines León’s rewriting of two Castilian legends through a feminist reading of Bakhtin, which demonstrates the narratives’ capacity to deconstruct patriarchy and create multiple points of view. Doña Jimena Díaz de Vivar resurrects the voice of the Cid’s wife, whose role in history was eclipsed by her larger-than-life husband, while La bella del mal amor challenges the double standard and status quo of the romancero tradition. Both serve as a window into women’s lives in the past, while exploring issues that still resonate today.

Chasing Remarkable Lives: a Problematization of Empowerment Stories for Girls

This article explores the question of how to assess children’s literature as feminist. Drawing upon a revision of the concept of postfeminism as a gendered neoliberalism that cultivates the ‘right’ disposition for succeeding in a neoliberal society, I bring together two possible objects of study upon which I outline some problematic aspects. I begin by focusing on a publishing phenomenon of the last few years: the biography compilations, such as the crowdfunded Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, that, in a more or less explicit manner, aim to provide younger generations with new repertoires of gendered agencies. Then I analyze two picturebooks that have been recommended by reading promotion agencies and praised for their anti-sexist values: Tirititesa and La bella Griselda. In both these picturebooks, we find two protagonists tran sgressing gender norms and heteronormative ideals of romantic love. Yet, I argue that they reproduce systems of exclusions that are quite problematic if read from feminist intersectionality. The texts analyzed are modeled by a postfeminist sensibility in which a celebratory “girl power” is put forward, while obscuring how (gendered) exclusions work.

“Devi Mangiare!” [You have to eat!]: Experiences of disordered eating among Italian-Australian women

In this article, the researchers report findings on how food meanings, culture and gender intersect in the experiences of Italian-Australian women. In-depth narrative interviews were thematically analyzed using a feminist social constructionist framework informed by anthropological theories about “foodways” and culture. Three core themes were identified in the women’s narratives: “il cibo e’ tutto, il cibo e amore” – “food is everything, food is love”; “fare la bella figura” – “to make a good impression”; and “il mio piatto” – “it’s my plate”. The researchers demonstrate how gendered expectations of women in Italian-Australian culture intersect with food meanings, cultural ideals and practices to produce distinct experiences of disordered eating and restricted access to formal support. The relevance of the findings are likely to be applicable to other migrant communities across the world. Particularly where ethnic communities retain distinctive food related meanings and practices post migration, that may intersect with cultural ideals venerating female thinness and the psycho-medical models and practices that pathologize disordered eating.

‘La bella Franceschina’ and Other Foreign Names in Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan

John Marston’s play, The Dutch Courtesan, presents characters with remarkably polyglot names for action set in England. My essay examines this naming practice, attending in particular to the Italian name and background of the 'Dutch' courtesan, Franceschina, familiar to theatre-goers as a traditional character in commedia dell’arte troupes and scenarios. Overall, the essay argues that Marston’s deployment of foreign and polyglot names plays out and extends the ambivalences criticism has identified in the play, and in the genre of city comedy, towards hybridizations springing up in England in response to contemporary mercantile and cross-cultural relations.

Performatividad de género en el teatro para niños. Estrategias para el análisis de obras infantiles

Este artículo tiene como objetivo delinear estrategias para el análisis de micropoéticas escénicas destinadas a las infancias desde las categorías de género y sexo. Para hacerlo, se desarrollarán los postulados de Judith Butler (2016, 2002) acerca de la performatividad del género como un acto estilizado y reiterado, constitutivo de las categorías generizadas. Serán contrapuestos con la comprensión del teatro para niños como un acontecimiento formativo de identidades. Se destacará su producción a partir de relaciones contingentes entre productores y espectadores que son, por tanto, asimétricas. Finalmente, a modo de ejemplo, se aplicarán las estrategias al caso La bella durmiente contada por una abuela, de Lorena Velazquez y Juan Carlos Fiasconaro.

Cesare Pavese: The Laboratory of Loneliness - A study of Among Women Only.

The Italian poet, novelist, translator, editor and diarist Cesare Pavese (1908-1950) famously committed suicide after winning the coveted Strega prize for his 1949 trilogy of novels La bella estate (The Beautiful Summer). This article discusses one of the novels in that trilogy, Among Women Only (Tra donne sole), presenting it as a psychological "laboratory" in which the intensely private Pavese explores the rationale for suicide on the very public stage of the novel. The author argues that the writing of Tra donne sole was one of the self-willed steps that made it not just possible for Pavese to commit suicide, but impossible not to.

FIESTA DE DIFUNTOS EN CASABLANCA LA BELLA DE FERNANDO VALLEJO

Casablanca la bella (2013), the latest novel by Fernando Vallejo, is a continuation of the dialogue the writer has with Death in earlier works. The novel shows and displays the writer’s obsession from the moment he buys Casablanca, an old house in the Laureles neighbourhood, Medellin, and begins its restoration. The refurbishment of the large house, a symbol of long gone and devastated splendour, becomes a utopian enterprise that, though doomed to fail, transcends the architectural scope and reaches revolutionary, political, heights in the narrative delusion. The enthronement of the Sacred Heart when the house is reopened rises as the possibility to reunite the ghosts of loved ones in a heterotopic party and to dream of winning the battle not only over Colombia, the bad mother country , but most importantly over destruction and death. Thus, the writing becomes funerary, inhabited by remnants and the insurmountable presence of the others, the dead and the animals, who find a welcoming place in remembrance and memory.

Dante’s la bella figlia as Circe: A Boethian Echo in Buti’s Unpublished Gloss on Paradiso XXVII, 137

This article has four main aims. First, it confirms that Francesco da Buti’s commentary, the most extensive as well as one of the more important vernacular exegetical works on Dante’s poem, circulated in two authorial redactions, released in 1394 and 1396 respectively. Second, it focuses on the interpretation of Paradiso XXVII, 136–38, one of the most debated passages in the entire poem, as it appears in Buti’s 1396 revised gloss, so far only accessible in manuscript form. Third, it provides a case study of the relationship between Dante’s early readers and Boethian material on Circe. In addressing these topics, the paper pinpoints the complexity of uncovering sources within the tradition of Dante commentary, given the extent of compilation, and the dangers of viewing similarity in expository technique as evidence of borrowing. Finally, it shows the importance of studies of the manuscript tradition and of work on critical editions of Dante commentaries.

«La bella malmaridada» en el auto «La adúltera perdonada» de Lope de Vega. De la condena medieval al perdón sacramental pasando por la comedia

The author of this article analyses the medieval romance with the theme of La bella malmaridada , the woman unfaithful, and studies the evolution of this topic so far until the Sacramental play by Lope de Vega La adultera perdonada . It is also considered a comedy by Lope with the same title. The intention of this article is a close examination to the character of the wife, her husband and the marriage context from the Middle Ages. Dealing with these aspects, Lope proposes different solutions to the conflict presented as it is analysed.

La bella figura and the Picasso complex: from Lost in Translation to Street of Dreams, Scarlett Johansson, the Dolce & Gabbana ambassador

ABSTRACT Since appearing in Lost in Translation in 2003, Scarlett Johansson has become somewhat of a cultural Italian icon: an American star who is perceived as an aesthetic representation of Italian femininity, customs and traditions. Because of her cinematic collaborations with two Italian-American filmmakers and her role as ambassador for the legendary Italian fashion house Dolce & Gabbana, Johansson’s public persona has transformed into an international super-star who embodies the essential Italian-esque qualities she performs in order to sell the ideal bella figura image to the world. This article is divided into two halves and will explore how Johansson is perceived as an Italian icon through specific patterns of stardom and national identity related to Italian culture. The first half will establish Johansson’s conceptual association with Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita in Lost in Translation through an engagement with the study of Pablo Picasso’s decomposition artworks. The second half of the article will examine Johansson’s role as an ambassador for Dolce & Gabbana, and how we can interpret Johansson’s image in Martin Scorsese’s Street of Dreams as a sellable commodity for which Scorsese channels narratives of Sicilian immigration to both cinema and fashion-based markets.

Nuevos datos acerca de los repertorios teatrales en el primer catálogo de «El peregrino en su patria»

This paper shows that the plays contained in the repertoire of the autores de comedias which appear in El peregrino en su patria (1604) are organised chronologically, although there are some nuances and exceptions. The article also expands the repertoire discovered by Thornton Wilder and sets the date of composition for some plays, paying special attention to lost texts such as La perdicion de Espana , La gobernadora , La gran pintora , La bella gitana or La toma de Alora . Finally, this paper attempts to show in a practical way that a database such as the Diccionario biografico de actores del teatro clasico espanol (DICAT) can be extremely helpful when it comes to dealing with some of the philology’s classical problems in general and those of the theatre of the Golden Age in particular.

Red Girls’ Revolutionary Tales: Antifascist Women's Autobiographies in Italy

This essay focuses on recent autobiographies written by Italian women born in the 1920s who engaged in revolutionary politics during and after the Second World War: Luciana Castellina ( La scoperta del mondo, 2011), Bianca Guidetti Serra ( Bianca la rossa, 2009), Marisa Ombra (La bella politico, 2010), Marisa Rodano ( Del mutare dei tempi, 2008) and Rossana Rossanda (La ragazza del secolo scorso, 2005). In these autobiographies, personal narratives of passionate engagement are entangled with the urgency of antifascist resistance, and with the social and political conflicts that traversed Cold War Italy. Women's multiple forms of political engagement within the Italian Communist Party are analysed, as well as the contradictory, ambivalent connection between Western European communist activists and Eastern European socialist regimes. The intersections between antifascist, communist and women's rights politics are also explored, since some of the authors were leaders of the nation-wide left-wing Union of Italian Women. The autobiographies tell the story of an antifascist, left-wing ‘middle wave’ that fought pioneering battles for women's political and social rights, and narrate its complex, conflictual encounter with second-wave feminism in the 1970s. These writings, therefore, allow us to reflect on changes in gendered subjectivities and revolutionary politics across time and generations.

Littenser Merke by Ale S. van Zandbergen

reviews and he is not ready to accept the new country. His nostalgia is quite bitter and hysterical; Colombia is a problem, in the same way everything that one truly loves is a problem. In this way, the house, at times, transforms into a metaphor of Colombia, a country that has changed and that is now impossible to recognize. All these complications can only translate, as usual, into the one problem that appears in different forms, again and again, in this author’s entire oeuvre: Vallejo (or whoever narrates this story) against the world. Vallejo’s diatribes inevitably arrive at referencing the creator of the universe: God, who has the ultimate responsibility. Casablanca la bella is almost a religious work but, of course, characterized by a negative religiousness that reveals a profound and furious nostalgia for the one who appears to be the cause of all the author’s misfortunes : God, the Father and Creator, and his son, Cristoloco (Crazy Christ); God, who created man, woman, and, of course, Colombia. Casablanca la bella shifts from being a story that narrates the problems of an old house to being a tale that describes the ills of the world, according to the narrator. However, this discourse, loaded with diatribes (so typical in Vallejo’s world), always ends up demonstrating that his writings are impregnated with an unusual and stunning spiritual freedom , a kind of freedom that also makes us laugh and dance, a kind of freedom that not many authors could exhibit with pride. Marcelo Rioseco University of Oklahoma Ale S. van Zandbergen. Littenser Merke. Ljouwert, Netherlands. Friese Pers. 2013. isbn 9789033004223 The reader of this debut novel will be surprised to get two stories for the price of one. Author Ale S. Van Zandbergen is indeed off to an ambitious and impressive start to his literary career. In Littenser Merke (The Littens fair), he juggles in alternating chapters the stories of a parsonage in the 1830s and the coming-of-age of a remarkable boy in the 1960s. The village of Littens is the locale for both stories. The Dutch Reformed Church in the early 1830s was roiled by the turbulence of Enlightenment ideas. Rev. Tinus Laurman, who actually lived there at the time, is the main character in the first story. Rev. Laurman is caught in the tension between an intellectual understanding of the 64 worldliteraturetoday.org Saadat Hasan Manto Bombay Stories Matt Reeck & Aftab Ahmad, tr. Vintage International Manto’s collection of short stories, written in the 1930s, captures life in Bombay in a compelling manner few other writers could hope to match. With humor and colorful imagery, the stories reveal the complex layers found in people’s lives from the lowest criminals to the performers desiring stardom. Deeply poignant, Manto’s writing shows a clear understanding of humanity. David Lloyd Over the Line Syracuse University Press Taking place over roughly a week in the life of a teenager, author David Lloyd dives into what heroism means and the ambiguities of life. Set in a town that’s slowly falling apart, the novel and its protagonist sink into the darkness and chaos of a criminal world before emerging again with hard-won truths about life. Nota Bene faith, which he prizes, and an emotional experience that others insist on and which he denounces as fanatical . Disturbed over the loss of members in his Littens church, he joins forces with other like-minded clergy to turn the tide, even undertaking a long and tiresome journey to northern Friesland for help. In the process, the studious Laurman finds his own faith unraveling. Not unrelated is the unraveling of his marital bliss. As an intellectual introvert and frigid lover, he’s not on the same page as his wife, who’s an emotional sensualist and wants a baby. But Shakespeare was right: all’s well that ends well, and this story, though in a rather bizarre way, does. The second story skips over more than a hundred years. Language , mores, social life, preoccupations , and much more have changed. But the Littens Fair is still the town’s annual highlight, and the church still stands in the same place. And here, too, the focus...

Tre donne sole: Pavese’s Women in Search of a Modern Identity

“Tre Donne Sole: Pavese’s Women in Search of a Modern Identity” analyzes the representation of women in three of Cesare Pavese’s works: “Pensieri di Dina,” La bella estate, and Tra donne sole. This article argues that the depiction of women and gender in these texts is more modern and complex than one might originally suspect considering Pavese’s reputation as a misogynist and the essentialist claims that appear throughout his work.

"Sinceramente, sua": cartas anônimas em Rosario Ferré

Após breve análise do gênero epistolar e a especificidade da carta anônima, com exemplos da literatura brasileira, focalizam-se as cartas inseridas no conto ‘La bella durmiente”/‘Sleeping Beauty”, de Rosario Ferré (original 1976). Conjugando análise textual e contextualização sociocultural, este trabalho associa as cartas anônimas à condição feminina e à situação marginal de Porto Rico como estado/nação.

Over-Diagnosing Dissociative (Conversion) Disorders

Over-Diagnosing Dissociative (Conversion) Disorders

Over Our Dead Bodies: Emilia Pardo Bazan, Rosario Ferre, and the Feminine Fantastic

This article examines how the nineteenth-century Spanish author Emilia Pardo Bazan and the twentieth-century Puerto Rican writer Rosario Ferre employ the fantastic's hesitation between natural and supernatural events to encourage the reader to pause and reflect upon the objectification of females and the closing of narratives over their dead bodies. In the stories studied, Pardo Bazan's El destripador de antano (The Ripper of Yesteryear, 1900), and Ferre's La muneca menor (The Youngest Doll, 1976) and La bella durmiente (Sleeping Beauty, 1976), the two authors employ a strikingly similar strategy to question men's figurations of the feminine: they take a prevalent literary image of women as inanimate beings (as a cadaver and as a doll, respectively) and complicate this image in such a way that they undermine the idea of passivity that informs the male writer's representation of females. In the process, they call into question both the masculine underpinnings of the aesthetics they engage (of naturalism and the fantastic) and the authority of various male figures (doctors, priests, fathers and husbands) who consider control over women's bodies their natural right.