‘Queering the Textual Politics of Alba de Céspedes’s Prima e dopo’

Alba de Céspedes’s Prima e dopo (1955) has generally been interpreted within the framework of the Italian Resistance and the subsequent disillusionment of Resistance ideals. While taking this interpretation into account, I argue that the central narrative of desire in Prima e dopo is not Irene’s relationship with her lover, Pietro, but Irene’s subversive desire for her maid, Erminia. I analyse and challenge some of the mechanisms and methodologies of Italian literary historiography that create and reproduce the disregard and devaluation of queer desire, specifically lesbian desire, in Italian narratives, and I identify scholarly, cultural and textual mechanisms that have rendered queer desire in Prima e dopo invisible. In sum, this article contributes to an Italian lesbian archive and lesbian literary historiography and argues that a queer reading of Erminia’s role in Prima e dopo enhances our understanding of the post-Resistance framework of the novel and its radical politics.