Leonora Carrington and Goliarda Sapienza: anarchic bodies

Thesis

This thesis brings together two little-know figures in the history of 20th-century literature: Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) and Goliarda Sapienza (1924-1996). Building on recent academic and public interest in both women, this research offers a new perspective by reading their literary work outside of its immediate cultural context.

Despite their differences, Carrington and Sapienza encounter many of the same cultural phenomena, and they share a sense of embodied, individual resistance to institutional power. Restraint enters the works of both authors via the Catholic church, psychiatric treatment, gender norms, and the rigidity of written language. In addition to closely analysing these themes through the comparison of several key texts, this thesis has a broader scope of considering the roles of autobiography, embodiment, and gender in the expression of identity.

Both Carrington and Sapienza, I find, evoke a sense of limitlessness in their depiction of personal identity. This resistance to restraint is carried over into the methodological approach of this comparison, bringing Carrington away from her Surrealist label, and bringing Sapienza toward it, and therefore casting their work in a new light.

Authors: McIntyre, H

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-9g9700wdz
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: embodiment; Goliarda Sapienza; surrealism; gender; Leonora Carrington; autobiography
• Subjects: Comparative literature - English and Italian; Women's writing