Italian Girlhoods and Other Brilliant Friends

Introduction to the Special Issue

abstract

While encompassing many differences and angles, all the collected articles endeavour to explore the ways in which female youth has been represented in modern and contemporary Italian cultural production. The idea that female coming-of-age stories have been subjected to several stages in their representation based on the social context, is another – significant – assumption that links these contributions together. Very much aware of the mutual influence between cultural change and the history of (literary) genres, we are convinced that this issue offers new insights on the voices of girls and young women in Italian culture across the decades, shedding a light on those representations in which they are positioned as subjects of their own narratives.