Keywords

• The present essay shows the results of a research study mapping Italian women-literates during the Restoration within the boundaries of the "Stato della Chiesa" and Southern Italy at large. This research has been performed in the framework of a broader one entitled Per un Archivio delle scritture femminili del Primo Ottocento italiano by a group belonging to the Dipartimento di Italianistica e Spettacolo
• Sapienza Università di Roma
• coordinated by myself. The study is inspired by Carlo Dionisotti's methodology (Geografia e Storia della letteratura italiana)
• based on historical-documentary criteria
• it adopts a critical perspective aimed at shedding new light on forgotten or "cancelled" female figures of the official Italian literary historiography who nevertheless hold a strong history for the history of culture. Some of the women-literates being reviewed here represent living examples for the most widely spread literary genres of the time (i.e. private forms of writing such as &ndash
• first of all &ndash
• epistolography
• a literary genre where the women-writers generally express an originality unknown in more official forms
• where they most likely undergo leading literary models of the Tradition. The most interesting themes
• such as the patriotic one
• education and the difficult condition of a woman-literate of the time
• are also being analyzed along with some relevant anthropological aspects