Being a Contemporary Woman Writer. Il saggio sulla scrittura: Deborah Levy, Jeanette Winterson e Zadie Smith

Since the publication of Montaigne’s Essaies in 1580, the essay’s tendency to escape definitions as well as its ability to take on several forms, have epitomised it as protean. Among its features is also the ability of being self-reflexive and of lending itself to exploring issues that merge the personal and the political, together with the professional aspects of the craft of writing. This thesis addresses these aspects within the more specific context of essays by writers such as Deborah Levy, Jeannette Winterson and Zadie Smith and is divided into two sections, which reflect the two main aims of the study. The first, addresses theoretical, methodological and terminological issues related to the essay. The second, aims at problematizing the question of woman writing and the representation of the writerly/writing self in different essay forms by taking into account Virginia Woolf as a literary model of both theory and practice of the essay and as a mother of the essay for the writers that came after her. By doing so, the project also aims to assess how the essay is, in its multiple forms, a profound expression of literariness.