Elusive subjects : biography as gendered metafiction

Susanna Scarparo
Leicester : Troubador, 2005

ISBN: 1904744192

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Book description
This is an innovative, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary reflection on the nature of women's biographical writing. In discussing how a number of writers from Italy, the United States and Australia rescue, or reinterpret, forgotten and excluded notable women from the past, Scarparo presents a controversial theory of biography based on metafictional dialogues between biographers as self-declared writers of fiction and their biographical subjects.
Elusive Subjects offers a perceptive discussion of the varying degrees to which writers such as Banti, Bellonci, Daitch and Modjeska render their presence as story-tellers visible. In doing so, Scarparo questions the concealment that the writing of history and biography have traditionally involved, and discusses feminist biography as gendered metafiction.

About the author
Susanna Scarparo is a Cassamarca lecturer in Italian Studies at Monash University. She has a PhD in Italian Studies and Comparative Literature and has published articles on life writing, Italian feminist theory and Italian Australian literature.

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