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casa sul lago della luna (1984) shares a clearly decipherable set of predominantly
male authorial influences and intertextual references.l" an obviously autobiographical
input and a hero dedicated to artistic ideals with a love of enclosed spaces. However
Duranti has never shied away from analysing the differences imposed by the gender
system," and this gives each ofthese features a distinctly new tone. Duranti learns to
meet the male text half way, admitting her own dependency on it, without being blind
to its potentially imprisoning effect. She shows how the power of fantasy can make
enclosure the only option, but by setting the tale against the crossing of real national
boundaries shows that other alternatives exist.
For a while Duranti's suspicion of the enclosed realm of the male-authored
fantastic and male textual construction in general means that she keeps it at this
distance - always experienced by a male protagonist. However, as her confidence
increases, in Sogni mancini (1996) she produces a more innovative use of the
fantastic. She uncovers its potential for multiple spaces of fantasy, which shatter its
imprisoning power and make it a modality oftransformation in the (de)construction of
female subjectivity. In this female subject we see the first of several for whom taking
up the active role in a quest motif demystifies the enclosed space, without draining it
of all its symbolic power as creative and protective space. Duranti's novel suggests
that the female subject can also develop an art ofliving."
By looking at this fantastic manifestation of the 'nomadic subject' we gain a
new insight into Rosi Braidotti's ideal ofpostmodern feminist subjectivity as situated
(locally), yet free, able to settle anywhere, but never with permanence in mind. 47 The
relevance of Braidotti's philosophy to contemporary Italian women writers who have
a particular tendency towards the regional/international has been observed on more
than one occasion.f The fantastic allows a similar subjecthood to find itself new
44 See Donatella De Ferra's thorough analysis of the intertextuality of the novel in her introduction to
La casa sui lago della luna, ed. and introduced by Donatella De Ferra (Hull: Troubador, 2001).
45 This does not extend to her acceptance ofthe title woman writer.
46 Susan. J. Rosowski, 'The Novel of Awakening' in Abel, Elizabeth, Hirsch, Marianne and Langland,
Elizabeth (eds), The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Self-Development (Hanover, NH, London:
University Press of New England): 'The direction of awakening follows what is becoming a pattern in
literature by and about women: movement is inward, towards greater self-knowledge that leads in turn
to a revelation of the disparity between that self-knowledge and the nature of the world. The
protagonist's growth results typically not with an "art of living", as for her male counterpart, but
instead with a realization that for a woman such an art of living is difficult or impossible; it is an
awakening to limitations.' (p.49)
47 See Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary
Feminist Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).
48 See Adalgisa Giorgio, 'Moving across Boundaries: Identity and Difference in the work of Fabrizia
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