Sicilian Correspondences: The Letters of Maria Messina to Alessio Di Giovanni, Giovanni Verga and Enrico Bemporad (1909-1940)

• Grant number: 24/16230-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: November 01, 2024
• End date: October 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Francisco Claudio Alves Marques
• Grantee: Sofia Rodrigues de Souza
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL-ASSIS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Assis. Assis , SP, Brazil

Abstract

When the first Italian women writers began to enter the literary circles of the"nineteenth century", they faced a hostile and prejudiced mentality on the part ofsome writers of the time. Alongside other contemporary writers, such as AdaNegri, Matilde Serao, Elvira Mancuso, Grazia Deledda, among others, the late-Verista Sicilian writer Maria Messina is among those women who faced all sortsof prejudice to enter the world of intellectuals of the time. As a hypothesis, thiswork aims to demonstrate that Maria Messina's letters sent to Alessio DiGiovanni, Giovanni Verga and Enrico Bemporad reveal not only the aspirationsand challenges faced by Italian women in the search for literary recognitionbetween the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, but alsoreflect the social and cultural dynamics of the time that shaped the femalecondition.