Corporeal Bonds. The Daughter-Mother Relationship in Twentieth-Century Italian Women’s Writing

The sequencing in the title and the designated time frame are essential to the reader's grasp of the scope of this analytical text.Sambuco, an Italian scholar with academic credentials that range from the University of Bologna to Monash University in Melbourne, carefully frames her subject from the outset.The "corporeal" ("tangible," "relating to the body," "nature of matter") is less clear but will become apparent in the theoretical explanation which she applies to her narrative selections.Unlike another recent study on motherhood (Benedetti -2007) Corporeal Bonds tightens the focus from the general theme of motherhood in Italian culture and literature to the trope of daughter-mother relations in five novels.As clearly stated in the title, the order is not arbitrary.The author applies close psychoanalytical analysis to the daughter in Morante's Menzogna e sortilegio, to Sanvitale's Madre e figlia, in Di Lascia's Passaggio in ombra, Ferrante's Amore molesto, and Stancanelli's Benzina.The fifth text includes the surreal dead mother's point of view; hence, her voice is also factored into the analysis.The introduction and first chapter is an historical overview comparing Anglo-American, French, and Italian women's studies themes beginning in the 1970s; it gives an updated list of primary and critical sources for the mother-daughter relationship.Sambuco mentions Cavarero in relation to her overall analytical framework but relies heavily on Irigaray's work "as a means to create new possibilities for the expression of the female subject [...] and her search for new forms of knowledge and language that 'speak corporeal'"(7)."Corporeal" from the title is thus defined.It is the text of the daughter-narrator which "defines the female self that is outside the patriarchal society" (7) and creates an alternative or rather new dimension outside and separate from the patriarchal dominant symbolic order.In the case of Morante's Elisa (a text which pre-dates considerably the other four but which fits securely into the analytical frame), her search for her mother's love seems to predict one of the Italian feminist dilemmas in the 1970s.Furthermore, her creation of a fantasized narrative shows the need to create a specifically woman's narrative.In Sanvitale's Madre e figlia (1980) Sonia renegotiates her relationship with her mother through consideration of the changing female body; but it is also the author's narrative strategies of dreams and imagination which make it possible to redefine corporeality.'Desire' appears in the subtitle of the chapter on Di Lascia's Passaggio.According to Sambuco, the female discourse is not so much stated as implied.The discussion of Ferrante introduces the fact that it is unknown whether that author is indeed a woman.However, our author deals mainly with content and not with the authors.Sambuco considers Delia from a psychoanalytic perspective but also deals with the very tangible metaphor of dresses and how they relate both to the storyline and to the corporeality analysis in general.Finally, Sambuco underscores the comic tones in Stancanelli's Benzina (1998), the most -314 -

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