L'amica geniale di Elena Ferrante: radici, identità e alterità

Abstract

This work spans a comparative, interdisciplinary analysis of the four volumes of Elena Ferrante’s noted tetralogy, the Neapolitan Novels [L’amica geniale] (2011-15), with the objective of compiling an overview of the social context in which the novels arose and their existing bibliography to date as well as examining their literary value by critically comparing the works to literature from the Neapolitan post-war tradition and to modern texts in the humanities. The aim is to fill a gap in academic scholarship on these powerful texts which is largely lacking as compared to the mass media attention dispersed on the topic. Despite representing the Neapolitan spirit of the times and building on its narrative tradition, the Neapolitan Novels contain elements of universal and archetypal breadth; both the novels’ relationship with tradition and their ability to innovate are emphasized. The question of whether Ferrante’s novels represent merely an ephemeral phenomenon that has garnered considerable attention on an international level versus the ways in which they may come to be regarded among the most representative works of the twenty-first century are scrutinized. [edited by Author]