1. The impossibility of writing an Aubiography:The emblematic case Of Doris Lessing Vita Fortunati Granada, Bologna, 17/1/ 2013

2. Doris May Tayler (Kermanshah, 22 ottobre 1919)

3. Feminism and Autobiography, Texts, Theories, Methods, ed. by Cosslett T., Lury C. and Summerfield P., London, Routledge and Kegan Smith S., A Poetics of Women’s Autobiography, Marginality and the Fictions of Self-Representation, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1987 Miller Nancy K., Getting Personal, New York and London, Routledge, 1991 Anderson L., “Autobiography and the Feminist Subject” in The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Literary Theory, Rooney E.( ed.), Cambridge University Press, 2006 Kuhn A., Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination, London and New York, Verso, 1995

4. Autobiography is a Complex Genre The first question is what are the make autobiography a complex genre. Autobiography is a hybrid, contaminated genre, set at the interface between several genres: biography, diary, memoir, letters. A borderline genre.

5. Autobiography and Women from the point of view of Memory Studies 1-Memory is not a fixed, monolithic entity, but a dynamic, fluid one. 2-The importance of space and the historical, socio-political context. 3-Tension between Individual Memory and Collective Memory.

6. Autobiography as a kind of “ Bildungsroman Autobiography presents itself to women writers above all as a form of “bildungsroman” of their own careers. On this subjects, it would be interesting as cue for research, to compare autobiography and female painter’s self portraiture. Both in literature and in painting autobiography and self potraiture become a way of affirming one’s role and one’s identity as women artists. In this process of auto identification thee is a strong need felt to relate to models, to have a “memory of a tradition” and, as regards women writers, a strong intertextuality.

7. 19571962

8. 1961 1992

9. 1994 1997

10. The meaning of writing a biography when you are old “ Quanto più invecchio, tanti più segreti mi ritrovo ad avere, di quelli da non rivelarsi mai, e questa, lo so è una condizione comune a gente della mia età. E poi perché dare tutta questa importanza al baciare e al rivelare? I baci sono davvero la cosa meno importante” ( D.Lessing, Sotto la Pelle, p.22)

11. The complex relationship with her mother “ Se provi a rivendicare la tua vita scrivendo un’autobiografia, la prima cosa da fare è chiedersi : ma questa è la verità? Ci sono aspetti della mia vita che cerco costantemente di capire meglio. Uno di questi –e come poteva essere altrimenti?-è il rapporto con mia madre, anche se quello che oggi mi interessa non è l’aspetto strettamente personale …Oggi vedo in lei una figura tragica, che cercava di uscire dagli anni con coraggio e dignità ”

12. The tricky question of time problema del Tempo : il tempo è “tricky” ingannevole Time radically changes the perspective that one has of one’s past, because in each phase of life there is a different perception of time. Moreover, one remembers how one was in the past on the basis of how one is in the current moment of trying to remember Lessing clearly underlines one of the key concepts in memory studies: context L’importanza del contesto nell’ atto di ricordare

13. The importance of the context in the act of remembering “I could with equal truth say I spent my childhood, girlhood and youth in the world of books. Or, wondering about in the bush, listening, and watching what went on. Here we are at the core of the problem of memory. You remember with what you are at the time you are remembering”( Doris Lessing, Under my Skin, p.185

14. The retrospective gaze obliges the writer to look at the past time with a different persective “ The main reason, the real one, why an autobiography must be untrue is the subjective experience of time. The book is written, chapter one to the end, in regular process through the years. Even if you go in for sleights of hand like flashbacks or Tristram Shandy, there is no way of conveying in words the difference between child time and grown- up time-and the different pace of time in different stages of an adult’s life” (Doris Lessing, Under My Skin, London Harper Collins Publishers,1994, p.109).

15. Fpr Lessing the autobiographical act is always a deconstructive and interpretative one.i La memoria non solo ha un carattere selettivo, ma conferisce al racconto un suo andamento peculiare.Il tempo subisce una torsione, si fa meno lineare procede a salti e a sbalzi: eventi del passato si mescolano a fatti presenti e talvolta la scrittrice si proietta nel futuro da una prospettiva passata. Per questo la Lessing è consapevole di avvalersi della possibilità di costruire con la propria creatività ciò che è stato.

16. The memory operates in different ways in each single person and that there might be contrasting memories of the same period “ This experience which was shocking to me, began my attempt to understand the extraordinary slippering of memory; before that, I had taken it for granted that people with the same experiences would remember the same things” Lessing D., Walking in the Shade, volume two of my Autobiography, 1949-1962, Harper Collins, London

17. . The real memory is the one that takes you back in the experience preserved in your mind, the one that brings back to the present all the sensations, the atmosphere, the climate of that particular moment. “Real remembering is-even if for a flash, even a moment-being back in the experience itself. You remember pain with pain, love with love, one’s real best self with one’s best self” Lessing D., Under my Skin, op.cit.,p.218.

18. The meaning of remembering Remembering is thus plunging oneself for the second time, even for just a second, into an experience, remembering is relievingit, not so much in detais, but in the perception of the atmosphere surrounding it.

19. Reproducing the atmosphere of an event, of a particular historical moment is an ardous undertaking ile “ It is hard to convey the flavour of this encounter, because the atmosphere of that time is utterly gone. This is always the difficulty, trying to record the past. Facts are easy: this and that happened; but out of the context and atmosphere, much behaviour –facts-social and personal seems, simply, lunatic”. Lessing D., Walking in the shade, p.286

20. “But behind all that friendly helpfulness was something else, the observer, and it is here I retreat to, to take refuge, when I think that my life will be public property and there is nothing I can do about it. You will never get access here, you can’t, this is the ultimate and inviolable privacy. They call it loneliness, that here is the place unsharable with anyone at all, ever, but it is all we have to fall back on. Me, I, this feeling of me. The observer, never to be touched, tasted, felt, seen, by anyone else”[1].[1] [1] Lessing D., Walking in the shade, p.20

21. “There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth”[1].[1] [1] Lessing D., Under my Skin, cit, p.314. DorIs Lessing conferisce alle sue opere di fiction il potere di esprimere la verità in maniera più efficace rispetto all’autobiografia.La narrativa diventa così un mezzo più diretto per dire la verità, quella che infastidisce, quella che fa vergognare, quella che ognuno di noi preferisce custodire dentro di sé.