serini

This book focuses on the autobiographical poetry of early 20th-century author Antonia Pozzi and her lifelong friend and fellow poet, Vittorio Sereni, most particularly on the autobiographical format of their writing and its role as a mode of ＂passive resistance＂ to Fascist control, a mode of resistance familiar to women’s writing even before the onset of Fascist totalitarianism. While Sereni is by far the better-known author, his response to the war experience and, particularly, to imprisonment recalls Pozzi’s work on a number of levels. In the ＂diaries＂ of both authors, autobiography functions as a means of constantly reasserting the self as a unique and separate individual against the totalizing forces of Fascist propaganda.

Amber Godey received her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with an emphasis on 20th century Italian, French and English literatures, and her BA in English from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. She has taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara as well as Central Texas College, and is currently an adjunct instructor at Western New Mexico University.