El cuerpo como escenario: actrices e histéricas en el fin de siècle

Fin-de-siècle culture is obsessed about vision and visibility; in fact, the period is conceived as a big spectacle where identities are builded in public. This paper wants to explore how the idea of theatrical society is one of the main subjects of the discussions about woman and femininity. I will focus on the “female performer” as a literary topic, in order to draw the discourse about natural/artificial woman, connecting this discussion with the medical research about performance and femininity, that is, hysteria. Finally, I will try to analyze the raising of the «divas» in order to show hoy they build their identities in public, negotiating with the ideas and topics proposed by the cultural texts of the period, focusing on the subversive use of the hysterical body that some of them (Loïe Fuller and Sarah Bernhardt) develop in their autobiographical texts as well as in their performances.