Prelude and Solitude: Notes on the Female Characters in English Postcolonial Literature
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13130/2037-2426/13820Keywords:
Women; Mute; Postcolonial; Silenzio; CharactersAbstract
In postcolonial literature, figures of aphasic or mute women often appear. These are characters who do not speak, by choice or by inhibition: women who do not have or have lost the use of the word; girls with almost autistic traits; disturbing, intriguing female figures who refuse to express themselves through language, all women who live the relationship with the outside world as violence. Precisely by reacting to this situation, the female characters of the most recent postcolonial novels begin to speak: first by babbling, like children who are trying out a new language, then putting together words, in the end whole sentences. And finally they come to tell us about themselves, to narrate their story, realizing that each person is his/her own story, and that the most subtle violence perpetrated on women is to silence them.
References
Bail, Murray. Eucalyptus. Harvill Press, 1998.
Benjamin, Walter. “Il narratore. Considerazioni sull’opera di Nikolaj Leskov.” 1936. Angelus novus, a cura di Renato Solmi. Einaudi, 2006.
Brink, André. Imaginig of Sand. Harvill Secker, 1996.
Cantarella, Eva. Tacita Muta: la donna nella città antica. Editori Riuniti, 1985.
Chandra, Vikram. Red Earth and Pouring Rain. Little Brown and Company, 1995.
Citati, Piero. Storia prima felice, poi dolentissima e funesta. Rizzoli, 1989.
Deshpande, Shashi. The Dark Holds No Terrors. Penguin Books India, 1980.
——. Roots and Shadows. 1983. Disha Books (Orient Longman Ltd.), 1996.
——. That Long Silence. Penguin, 1989.
Dorfman, Ariel. La Nana y el Iceberg. Seix Barral, 1999.
——. The Nanny and the Iceberg. Sceptre, 1999.
Glissant, Edouard. La case du commandeur. Seuil, 1981.
Gordimer, Nadine. “The Solitude of a White Writer. Melvyn Bragg.” Conversation with Nadine Gordimer. University Press of Mississippi, 1990.
Irving, Washington. Rip Van Winkle. William Heinemann, 1919.
Jelloun, Tahar Ben. La Nuit de l’erreur. Seuil, 1996.
Mansfield, Katherine. Prelude. Hogarth Press, 1918.
Jonson, Ben. Ben Jonson’s Plays and Masques: Authoritative Texts of Volpone, Epicoene, the Alchemist, the Masque of Blackness, Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists at Court, Pleasure reconciled, edited by Richard Harp. Norton Critical Edition, 2000.
Mastretta, Angeles. Mujeres de ojos grandes. Seix Barral, 1990.
Moorcock, Michael. Mother London. Harvill Secker, 1988.
Philip, Marlene Nourbese. She Tries her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks. The Canadian Ragweed Press, 1989.
Ovidius, Publius Naso. Fasti. Edited by Anne Wiseman and Peter Wiseman. Oxford World’s Classics, 2013.
Perrault, Charles. “La Belle au bois dormant.” Les Contes de ma mère l'Oye, Barbin, 1697.
Placido, Beniamino. “A che cosa servono Le Mille e una notte?” La Repubblica, 05 marzo1988.
Punter, David. Postcolonial Imaginings: Fictions of a New World. Edinburgh University Press, 2000.
Sharma, Bulbul. Banana-Flower. Viking/Allen Lane, 1999.
Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. Jonathan Cape, 1981.
Sophocles, Ajax. Edited by P. J. Finglass. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
![Creative Commons License](http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/3.0/88x31.png)
Except where otherwise noted, the content of this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License.
Accepted 2020-07-02
Published 2020-07-02