THE FIGURE OF PAOLINA IN ARGENTINEAN LEOPARDISM

Abstract

Paolina Leopardi appears as a protagonist –along with her brother Giacomo– in one of the chapters in Las hermanas tutelares by Rafael Alberto Arrieta (1923), the short story “Hermanos” by Enrique M. Butti (1993) and the novel Después del día de fiesta by Griselda Gambaro (1994). In each of these cases she is presented as a mythical figure, to a large degree, in detriment to that of Giacomo, which illustrates an interest in searching for a Leopardi in the feminine, endowed with the emotional and aesthetic force emblematic of the archetypal woman who loves or is loved in absence or from afar.