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ii. On the edge of a marginal genre
The fantastic presents Italian women writers with the ideal means with which to
foreground their ex-centric relationship with the canon, in a language that conveys
spatial anxiety and exploration. As I will show in this section the fantastic has always
been a politically awkward genre in Italy and doubly so for the female writer, the
effects of whose late arrival are still felt today. Until the post-war period the fantastic
was regarded as having even fewer female practitioners than male ones. Writing
within it allows contemporary women to stand as close to the edge ofliterary tradition
as possible without disappearing, and thus question the boundaries ofthat territory.
ii.i. The Fantastic in Italy
Cornwell's definition of the fantastic as intertextual is particularly pertinent to Italy
where a new attention to the genre has been provoked by a 'singolare fioritura'115
within the postmodern re-vitalizing of old forms. Thus although there exist few
comprehensive studies of the nineteenth and twentieth century fantastic in
Italy,116there are rather more recent articles concerning its postmodem flowering and
the development of theories of the fantastic.'!" The whole is infused with the feeling
that, having missed out on the nineteenth century fantastic, Italy has never really
measured up to the genre's historic development in other European countries (namely
England, France and Germany) and the United States until the present day. It is an
issue that will never be completely clarified since the genre's history in Italy makes it
difficult to distinguish between cause and effect, between an original real lack of
lIS Ghidetti and Lattarulo, p.vii.
116 See Neuro Bonifazi, Teoria del 'fantastico' e il il raeeonto 'fantastico' in ltalia: Tarchetti­
Pirandello-Buzzati (Ravenna: Longo, 1982); Monica Fametti, 1/ giuoco del maligno. 1/ raeeonto
fantastieo nella letteratura italiana tra Otto e Noveeento (Firenze: Vallecchi, 1988); Giovanna
Desideri, 'II fantastico' in Letteratura Italiana. Storia e geografia. III edited by Albert Asor Rosa
(Torino: Einaudi, 1989), pp.969-998.
117 In 'Percorsi del fantastico nella narrativa degli anni '80' Antonio Corsaro speaks ofa 'la quasi totale
assenza di fondamenti teorici' (p.57), which has only recently been partially compensated for in recent
years by 'l'essenziale fioritura di studi teorico-critici che negli stessi anni di cui ci occupiamo ha
visibilmente diminuito il deficit rispetto alIa situazione d'Oltralpe', even tentatively suggesting 'se non
una dipendenza, almeno un significativo collegamento tra la scrittura creativa dell'oggi e quella nuova
disponibilita di supporti teorici'(p.58). This particular 'fioritura' includes: La narrazionefantastiea ed.
by Ceserani and others; I piaeeri dell'immaginazione ed. by Pisapia; A. Scarsella, 'Profilo delle
poetiche del Fantastico' in Rassegna della letteratura italiana' ed. by V.Branca and C.Ossola (Firenze:
Vallecchi, 1988); II punto su: la letteraturafantastiea ed. by Silvia Albertazzi (Rome: Editori Laterza,
1995); Geografia, storia e poetiea del fantastieo ed. by Fametti; Stefano Lazzarin, Il modo fantastieo
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