About the Author :
Susan Amatangelo is an Assistant Professor of Italian at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, where she has taught since 1998. She received her Ph.D. in Italian from Harvard University. Her areas of specialization are nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and women’s studies. Professor Amatangelo has published articles on Giovanni Verga in Romance Languages Annual and Spunti e Ricerche. In addition, she has contributed articles on Alberto Moravia, Amelia Rosselli, and, most recently, Dacia Maraini to Campi immaginabili, Studies in Honor of Dante Della Terza, and Italica, respectively. This is her first book.

Figuring Women: A Thematic Study of Giovanni Verga’s Female Characters examines Verga’s heroines in the social and cultural context of nineteenth-century Italy. In particular, the work highlights the ways in which social reality and cultural fantasy clash with women’s individuality. In this vein, the study focuses on the critical moments in the formation of female identity and on the roles and relationships that define these moments. This thematic approach allows comparisons among characters in dramatically different circumstances and brings to light the experiences that unite them.

The FDU Press has particular strengths in literary studies, world history and politics, biography, film, ethnic studies, sociology, the Civil War, art, religion, local history, and urban studies.