Amelia Rosselli has often been considered an obscure and impenetrable author, whose language may be identified with the expression of the unconscious. In this study I argue, on the contrary, that a strong cognitive tension underlies the poet's multilingual production (in Italian, English, and French). I therefore explore its imaginative and philosophical depth, by reconstructing Rosselli's project to transpose into writing the complexity of human experience in a fickle, chaotic, and contradictory world. In the first chapter I focus on language, in particular on lexical fusions and distortions, mainly questioning Pasolini's interpretation based on of the notion of freudian slip. With the aid of hermeneutical tools borrowed from the philosophy of language, I claim that Rosselli's language aims on the one hand at mirroring reality, and on the other at making textual experience potentially infinite, thus engaging the reader in a never-ending interpretation. I also maintain that the category of the baroque allows us to appreciate Rosselli's aesthetics from an original point of view. In the second chapter I investigate Rosselli's elaboration of a new metrical form, stressing its relations to the poet's studies in musicology, ethnomusicology and acoustics. Through the meter Rosselli tries to restrain subjectivity, hence accessing a more objective and universal poetic dimension. The last chapter is devoted to Rosselli's mysticism. The mystic tradition offers a vivid imagery and a refined rhetoric to an author who wants to put the subject aside and depict the unstable (or vain?) nature of the world. However, Rosselli's attempt to find a metaphysical or divine remedy to violence and chaos does not succeed. Her longing for transcendency remains unfulfilled.

My dissertation focuses on various intellectual currents that shaped poet, composer, and amateur ethnomusicologist Amelia Rosselli’s work from 1950 to 1964, before she gained mild fame as a poet on the Italian literary scene. Rosselli had a trilingual background in Italian, English, and French, due to her Italian father and English mother and her family’s forced absence from Italy from Rosselli’s birth in 1930 until 1946, as a result of her father’s political activities. Rosselli is sometimes considered an outsider to Italian poetic movements, but in this dissertation I trace how she fits into various transnational intellectual networks. In doing so, I examine Rosselli through different lenses than what is typical in analyses of her work: I center her understandings of cultural difference according to her studies in various strains of anthropology and ethnomusicology. In doing so, Rosselli’s association of cultural difference with new conceptions of technology comes to the fore: namely, audiovisual recording technology used in ethnographic and ethnomusicological research; tools of electronic music that were bound up with this research in the 1950s; and new points of view on the body’s use as a technology, through a diffusion of the concept of techniques of the body. What emerges from my investigation is Rosselli’s political investments in establishing the universality of humans’ physiological and psychological capacities, beyond race (Chapter 1); valorizing previously marginalized cultural techniques, particularly techniques of the body (Chapter 2); seeking new mediatic modes of expression beyond the West (Chapter 3); and remapping relationships between self and other in her poetic output (Chapter 4). Although these political goals did not always result in building networks of solidarity, I argue that taking them seriously as important elements in Rosselli’s thought allows for a fuller consideration of how ideas of power dynamics, universality, and relationality play out in relation to cultural difference in her work. In doing so, I reveal how Rosselli inscribed herself into various political and intellectual networks that shaped Italian cultural life in the 1950s and 1960s.

Cotutelle Université de Montréal et Université Sorbonne Nouvelle / Ce travail se propose d’étudier la poésie d’Amelia Rosselli (1930-1996), de Toni Maraini (1941), de Dahlia Ravikovitch (1936-2005) et d’Yona Wallach (1944-1985) sous l’angle de la contestation. L’objectif principal est d’analyser l’hybridité poétique et son potentiel politico-contestataire chez ces femmes qui, à travers leur écriture, se rebellent contre les diktats du système patriarcal. L’après-guerre en Italie (Rosselli et Maraini) et la fondation de l’État d’Israël (Ravikovitch et Wallach), deux époques marquées par une forte valorisation du virilisme militariste et héroïque, constituent les contextes d’énonciation de ces œuvres. Selon notre hypothèse, c’est aussi en raison de cette valorisation du virilisme que l’expression poétique de ces femmes se conçoit comme une bataille : chacune à sa manière, les auteures aspirent à une révolution sociétale, concernant en particulier le statut des femmes et de leur écriture. Quelles sont les modalités de configuration de cette bataille, et comment celle-ci se reflète-t-elle dans la poésie de nos auteures ? Comment leur écriture s’exprime-t-elle en tant qu’espace de négociation au sein de la langue des pères ? Cette réflexion prendra la notion d’hybridité comme point de départ, examinant l’idée d’une expression contestataire qui émanerait des interstices mêmes du discours dominant (Bhabha). L’étude sera développée en trois parties principales. D’abord, il s’agira de montrer en quoi l’absorption et l’altération du langage masculin peuvent être utilisées par les femmes comme un outil de révolte aboutissant à un langage renouvelé. Ensuite sera abordée une autre manière, plus subtile, de s’approprier la langue et le pouvoir masculins : l’appropriation et l’ingestion du corpus des hommes, entendu au double sens de matière littéraire (intertextualité) et de corps stricto sensu (cannibalisme). Enfin, nous verrons comment le sujet-femme se déplace à la conquête de l’espace et du temps – ceux-ci étant définis comme des dimensions du privilège masculin – qu’elle hybride aussi. Nous constaterons que la traduction est consubstantielle à cette opération d’hybridation : l’acte traduisant se réalise par une nouvelle cannibalisation du corpus, lequel est alors déplacé vers une autre dimension spatio-temporelle, elle aussi conséquemment hybridée. En étudiant des textes en langue originale (italien, français, hébreu) et dans leurs langues de traduction (anglais, français, italien), nous verrons comment celle-ci agit comme une caisse de résonnance pour poursuivre le geste originaire de bataille et le prolonger dans une autre dynamique à même d’en amplifier le caractère hybride et d’en attiser la flamme contestataire. À travers ces nouvelles pistes interprétatives qui mettent de l’avant la dimension subversive de la poésie de ces auteures, ce travail démontre comment, substituant aux catégories fixes imposées par la société patriarcale une vision plus fluide du monde, l’écriture hybride des femmes fait de la page un espace révolutionnaire depuis lequel un nouveau paradigme peut surgir. / This thesis analyzes the poetry of Amelia Rosselli (1930–1996), Toni Maraini (1941), Dahlia Ravikovitch (1936–2005), and Yona Wallach (1944–1985) from the angle of protest. The main aim of this research is to study the subversive potential of poetic hybridity, as it shows in the work of these women poets. Through their writing, in fact, they rebel against the dictates of the patriarchal system. The context of these works are post-war Italy (Rosselli and Maraini) and the founding of the State of Israel (Ravikovitch and Wallach), both periods marked by militarist virilism and heroic values. According to my hypothesis, such virilism is one of the reasons why the poetic expression of these women is conceived as a battle. Each in their own way, the authors aspire to a social revolution, which focuses on the status of women and their writing. Which shapes does this battle take, and how is it reflected in the poetry of these authors? How is their writing expressed as a space for negotiation within the language of the fathers? Starting from the notion of hybridity, this thesis investigates the idea of a protest expression emanating from the interstices of the dominant discourse (Bhabha). This work is divided into three main parts. Firstly, I show how women appropriate and alter male language as a tool of dissent, thus creating a renovated language. Secondly, I focus on the appropriation and ingestion of the corpus of men: both in the sense of literary material (intertextuality), and as body stricto sensu (cannibalism). Finally, I analyze how the woman-subject conquers and hybridizes space and time, which have been normally defined by male privilege. The act of translation is directly connected with the process of hybridization. Translating, in fact, resolves in a new cannibalization of the corpus, which is then moved to another space-time dimension. By approaching the texts in the original languages (Italian, French, Hebrew), as well as their translations (English, French, Italian), I show how the translation acts as a sounding box, amplifying the original intention of battle. Thanks to these new interpretive trajectories, focusing on the subversive dimension of these authors’ poetry, this work highlights the transformative power of substituting fixed categories imposed by patriarchal society with a more fluid vision of the world. Thus, the hybrid writing of women has the potential to transform the written page into a revolutionary space from which a new paradigm can emerge.