The black madonna figure as a source of female empowerment in the works of four Italian-Canadian authors (Nina Ricci, Frank G. Paci, Vittorio Rossi, Marco Micone)

Abstract

This thesis deals with the image of the black madonna, a pre-Christian female deity, in the works of four Italian-Canadian authors: the works include Nina Ricci's novel Lives of the Saints, Frank G. Paci's novel Black Madonna, Vittorio Rossi's play The Last Adam, and Marco Micone's play Addolorata. The black madonna, the central figure of this thesis, is not an exclusively Italian phenomenon. Most people probably associate her with the image of the Southern European, predominantly old, often Italian peasant woman, who is dressed in black clothes from head to toe. The black madonna statues, however, are possibly connected with the veneration of a female divinity, the Great Mother, Great Goddess, primordial goddess, and even earth mother. In his early myth and folklore collection, Sir George Frazer concluded that the "great Mother Goddess (of Western Asia), the personification of all the reproductive energies of nature, was worshipped under different names but with a substantial similarity of myth and ritual" (Frazer 299). (Résumé abrégé par UMI.)