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Nuova DWF. Donna Woman Femme
Quaderni di studi internazionali sulla donna
Roma, Coines Edizioni, then Editrice coop. UTOPIA, 1976-1985
Divided skies. Women writers in East Germany, 1981, n. 18
EDITORIAL, pp. 3-6
MORGNER Irmtraud
Life and adventures of the trobadora Beatriz. A novel in thirteen
books and seven interludes, pp. 7-15
WOLF Christa
Reading and writing, pp. 17-30
GARGANO Antonella (edited by)
Anna Seghers' "workshop" and the elaboration of cultural heritage:
a dialogue with Christa Wolf, pp. 31-41
PERRETTA Wanda
The shadow of a dream. A reading experience, pp. 43-48
SECCI Lia
The woman question in East-German literature: themes and
trends, pp. 49-60
CHIARLONI PEGORARO Anna
Notes on a "theory of dissonance". Christa Wolf's
Selbstversuch - Traktat zu einem Protokoll, pp. 61-72
GARGANO Antonella
Narrative patterns: autobiography and imagination, pp.
73-84
WOLTER Christine
Maxie Wander and documentary literature, pp. 85-94
KAUFMANN Eva
Women's literature of the seventies in East Germany,
pp. 95-101
MOLINARI Elisabetta
Stella Browne's letters to "The Freewoman",
pp. 103-116
Who are today the women writers of the DDR? In a country where on the legislative and social level women have achieved far more than in Western countries, what are the forms and contents characterising women's writing? These questions may also be a way of looking at the Italian debate about emancipation and liberation.
MORGNER Irmtraud, Life and adventures of the trobadora Beatriz. A novel in
thirteen books and seven interludes, pp. 7-15
A selection of passages from Morgner's last novel, the linguistically experimental and fantastic story of the travels through History, and of the awakening to a new awareness of her self and of her role, of a woman who moves from Medieval troubador France to the turmoil of '68 in Paris.
WOLF Christa, Reading and writing, pp. 17-30
A written monologue on writing of one of the most significant voices of contemporary German literature.
GARGANO Antonella (edited by), Anna Seghers' "workshop" and the
elaboration of cultural heritage: a dialogue with Christa Wolf, pp. 31-41
Christa Wolf interviews Anna Seghers, 82 years old doyenne of German women writers, politically active and part of literary debates since 1928. The interview witnesses how the weight of the German past has been felt also in the literary field, and how the old generation managed to face it, and then struggled to be rid of it in order to meet the needs of the new generations.
PERRETTA Wanda, The shadow of a dream. A reading experience, pp. 43-48
Two are the women involved in this "reading experience": the reader, Vanda Perretta, and the writer, Christa Wolf, the latter being the "artist", the "creative" woman, and the other "myself, a woman poles apart from creativity, but constantly confronting herself with it thanks to her job as a University teacher of literature". The paper tells the story of the encounter between the reader and the writer from her first novels down to The Shadow of a Dream, Christa Wolf's biography of Caroline von Günderrode.
SECCI Lia, The woman question in East-German literature: themes and trends,
pp. 49-60
The author's aim is to verify whether in socialist countries literature written by women shows any hints of that general discontent women have widely displayed over the last decade towards male institutional power, in spite of their acceptance of different political ideologies. East-Germany offers a particularly rich example in this respect of a broad literary production, both by women and men focusing on the contradiction between emancipation de facto (e.g. an advanced social legislation, massive presence of women in the labour force) and female identity.
The paper offers an exhaustive study of such a literary production, from the sixties to nowadays, focusing both on some of the most important women writers and on the most recent western literary criticism concerned with them.
CHIARLONI PEGORARO Anna, Notes on a "theory of dissonance". Christa
Wolf's Selbstversuch - Traktat zu einem Protokoll, pp. 61-72
The author underlines the central critical role of literature written by women in a country such as East Germany in which a women's movement does not exist in terms of an open discussion of women's experiences.
In this context literature represents both a source of information on the data concerning women's dissatisfaction with social organisation (e.g. women's suicides) as well as a way to know more about changes in the relationship between sexes not only in the field of social reality but also in the image men and women have of each other.
GARGANO Antonella, Narrative patterns: autobiography and imagination,
pp. 73-84
The author analyses women's writing in East Germany from the point of view of their search for self-consciousness both in the women's diaries as well as in their autobiographies. She also includes interviews as a form of "indirect autobiographies".
In fact though aiming at a kind of "documentary book", the interview tends to the discovery of self-identity through other women's search for self-knowledge. Thus autobiography becomes a step towards fiction.
WOLTER Christine, Maxie Wander and documentary literature, pp. 85-94
The author analyses Maxie Wander's book Guten Morgen, du Schöne!, a collection of 19 interviews to women of different ages, jobs and social status. The use recorded interviews was very popular in the literature of the seventies, its main concern being to set up an "exemplar pattern" or "written portrait" supported by oral documentation.
Maxie Wander's intent on the contrary is not to build up female stereotypes as much as to establish a mutual exchange of female experiences with the women she interviews. They tell about their lives not as a sequence of biographical data but as an attempt to rise biographical consciousness. In her paper Christine Wolter follows the same literary pattern as Maxie Wander's, drawing from Maxie's diary as well as from her husband's personal recollection.
KAUFMANN Eva, Women's literature of the seventies in East Germany, pp.
95-101
The paper is a wide reading of contemporary women's writing, tracing down the influence of women's books on female audience and their role in social changes. Such a literature is the expression of a new self-consciousness by women with regard to emancipation, within social structures. Starting from a "privileged" situation, women have been able to pose dilemmas, discover new needs, envision new tasks, both for the present and for the future.
MOLINARI Elisabetta, Stella Browne's letters to "The Freewoman",
pp. 103-116
The author retraces the intellectual and political itinerary of F.W. Stella Browne, a convinced and generous English feminist of the period 1912-1938, who openly supported contraception and abortion, publicly advocating it already in 1912.
Passages from the letters Browne sent to the feminist weekly "The Freewoman" are used to illustrate her ideas on female eroticism, prostitution, the immorality of the marriage contract, single mothers, sometimes in disagreement with other significant figures of the feminist movement.