Marianna Coffa e il potere del pregiudizio

Abstract

The story of Mariannina Coffa (1841-1878), the poet of Noto, is little known in the nineteenth-century literature, but it is exemplary to document the immense power that the inflexible moral laws and prejudices of obsolescent anthropological context such as the Sicilian province have about a woman. His love for Ascenso is denied by the family that force her relentlessly to an arranged marriage. Hence the martyrdom of her that was defined not by chance “the blackcap of Noto”. Her verses (Poems, 1855, New songs, 1859), as well as an ardent love for Italy, reflecting the suffering of a sensitive soul who fights against the society that oppresses and that affects their lives, until the disease and to death. But above all they are meaningful Letters to Ascenso preserved at the Biblioteca Comunale di Noto –some published and some unpublished– which are the subject of this specific article.