@misc{10481/81488,
year = {2023},
url = {https://hdl.handle.net/10481/81488},
abstract = {This thesis aims at rediscovering women Romantic playwrights in English, Italian and Spanish
literature, and their tragedies, analysed through a feminist critical approach. Starting from a comparative
study of the Romantic Age and Romantic women’s writings in Great Britain, Italy and Spain, an
overview of female writers’ role and contribution to the development of Romantic literature will be
presented. This fundamental examination of the Romantic socio-cultural context will be followed by an
in-depth analysis of the Romantic theatrical environment in the three different countries, deepening the
issue of women’s roles as dramatists, actresses, managers, theorists and critics. More specifically, the
relationship between women playwrights and the stage will be tackled, investigating how these women
managed to appropriate the “high” genre of tragedy. A focus on the changes that tragedy underwent
during the Romantic Age will be offered, so to explore in detail in which ways women challenged,
coped with or took possession of both the old and the new canons of the genre. The core of the thesis
will include an overview of English, Italian and Spanish women dramatists and a brief analysis of some
of their most popular tragedies. The tragedies analysed have been chosen according to themes in
common, in order to demonstrate if and how these women used the pen and the stage to address specific
issues and to affirm their own agency and subjectivity, subverting or negotiating the norms imposed by
patriarchal society. Among female playwrights’ dramatic production, three tragedies have been selected,
one for each literature, in order to be presented and thoroughly investigated through a close reading
which takes into account a variety of aspects: historical context, gender representation, issues of
otherness and language. The respective three dramatists will also be examined in order to contextualise
their tragedies and the themes they tackled within their biographical circumstances and previous literary
production. By doing so, it will be possible to highlight the reasons that led them to enter the male
domain of tragedy, the “high” genre par excellence, regarded as strictly masculine. This investigation
will help us understand if the choice of writing tragedy was made as a conscious and voluntary act of
empowerment aimed at asserting themselves in the public realm, at denouncing their forced submission
and at recounting their own story through their own voices. It will also be underlined how and why these
female playwrights who lived approximately in the same historical period and were influenced by the
same cultural movement—although in different countries—employed tragedy to address similar or
different issues, and which consequences they faced. This analysis will be conducted through a feminist
critical methodology, that includes historical, literary, philosophical and political theories developed in
the last decades, adjusted and contextualised so that they could be a useful tool in the Romantic literary
context.},
organization = {Tesis Univ. Granada.},
publisher = {Universidad de Granada},
title = {Women’s tragedy in the romantic age: questioning english, italian and spanish theatre and drama from a feminist perspective},
author = {Pramaggiore, Valentina},
}