Chacun de nous tient sa blessure ouverte, si che tal piaga il mondo unqua risalde: The wound in women's poetry (that of Cixous and Colonna among others)

It is a well known fact that Italian Petrarchism reprises the vast and complex repertory of metaphors, images and themes employed by Petrarch in the Rerum Vulgarium fragmenta with a manneristic method which makes it very difficult, occasionally, to recognise the real literary difference between the model and the imitations. The image of the wound—charged by strong significations referring to the themes of time, memory, relationship with the Other, love’s pain—is very important in that Petrarchistic metaphorical apparatus. The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the way in which the Petrarchist poetry reuses this image, with a particular attention to women’s writing. What is the différance (to quote Jacques Derrida) in the use of wound ‘sign’ by lyric poets as Vittoria Colonna, Gaspara Stampa or Veronica Gambara? And what is the peculiar value of a female lament about the violence of love? Has this poetical wound, this cut in the lover’s body, something to do with gender identities?