Gender, Narrative, and Dissonance in the Modern Italian Novel

Combining close textual readings with a broad theoretical perspective, Gender, Narrative, and Dissonance in the Modern Italian Novel is a study of the ways in which gender shapes the principal characters and narratives of seven important Italian novels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Alessandro Manzoni’s I promessi sposi (1827) to Elsa Morante’s Aracoeli (1982).

Silvia Valisa’s innovative approach focuses on the tensions between the characters and the gender ideologies that s...