Introduction

This chapter outlines the methodological approach utilized within Nineteenth-Century Italian Women Writers and the Woman Question: The Case of Neera and the work’s principal objective: analyzing the contribution of fin-de-siècle Italian woman writer Neera to literary and cultural debates of her time in order to demonstrate the pivotal role she played in renewing Italian literature and contributing to the creation of a female literary voice within the Italian context. From a methodological standpoint, the volume draws from the Anglo-American feminist critical tradition, modern Italian feminist theory on the maternal order and sexual difference and a close reading of Neera’s literary, theoretical and epistolary writings in order to examine her work from a three-pronged perspective: as promoter of a maternal order in contrast to the existent paternal order, as one of few women writers to participate actively in Italy’s verismo movement and as epistolary correspondent of leading representatives within fin-de-siècle Italian literary and journalistic circles. Nineteenth-Century Italian Women Writers and the Woman Question: The Case of Neera represents the first monographic volume in English dedicated exclusively to this important Italian woman writer, repositioning her within the Italian literary landscape and canon. In order to contextualize Neera within the fin-de-siècle period, this introduction discusses the negative portrayals of femininity that circulated heavily during the time and how such theories influenced the critical reception of many women writers’ literary production.