Lost in The Art(ifice) of Male Language: Finding the Female Author in Paola Capriolo's Il doppio regno

Author: Hipkins, Danielle

Source: The Modern Language Review, Volume 101, Number 1, 1 January 2006 , pp. 90-105(16)

Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association

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Abstract:

With its self-conscious intertextuality and thirty-year-old female narrator, Capriolo's Il doppio regno invites interpretation as a form of `fictitious autobiography'. This reading emphasizes the novel's importance as an exploration of female authorial anxiety in relation to a predominantly male-authored canon. Focusing upon Capriolo's admiration for Gottfried Benn and his privileging of art as absolute, the article shows how women's alienation from language is dramatized through the depiction of a fantastic space. The protagonist's encounter with a labyrinthine hotel is also the author's encounter with a language that claims to speak for the universal subject, but in fact excludes the female.

Keywords: intertextuality; Capriolo's Il doppio regno; fictitious autobiography; female authorial anxiety; women's alienation from language; fantastic

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: University of Exeter

Publication date: 2006-01-01

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The Modern Language Review, the flagship journal of the Association, is available to all individual members as part of their subscription. MLR is one of the oldest journals in its field, maintaining an unbroken publication record since its foundation in 1905, and publishing more than 3,000 articles and 20,000 book reviews.

Each volume consists of four issues, published in January, April, July and October of each year. Its 1000+ annual pages are divided roughly equally between articles, predominantly on medieval and modern literature in the languages of Europe, and over 500 reviews of books in these areas. All contributions are in English, and each section is edited by a noted scholar in the field, under the overall supervision of the General Editor. Articles are chosen not only for their scholarly worth and originality but also, as far as possible, for their potential interest to a wider readership in other disciplines.

Lost in The Art(ifice) of Male Language: Finding the Female Author in Paola Capriolo's Il doppio regno

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