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List of contents
Acknowledgments
Chronology of Elena Ferrante’s Works and Abbreviations
1. Introduction: Elena Ferrante, World Literature, and the Work of Literary Translation
World Literature and the Creation of Elena Ferrante
Ferrante’s Feminine Imaginary
Ferrante’s Female Genealogies
The Translator as Seamstress: Figures of Translation from the Periphery to the Center
Elena Ferrante as World Literature: An Overview
2. Frantumaglia and Smarginatura: The Borders of a Universal Feminine Imaginary
Incisions and Inscriptions of the Body
The Parameters of Frantumaglia
Smarginatura in the Neapolitan Novels
The “Mothers” of Smarginatura
Women Who Write
3. Binding and Unbinding the Maternal Body and Voice
Desire and Disgust for the Mother
Conflations and Inversions: Mothers, Daughters, Dolls
Enclosing the Maternal Body: Cellars, Locked Apartments, Clothes
Laughing Bodies and Grotesque Gestures
Dead Mothers and Corporeal Flows
4. Outside the Frame: The Aesthetics of Female Creativity and Authorship
Inside the Frame: The (Nude) Female Body-as-Parts
Inside the Frame: Mirrors, Collages, Still Lifes
Outside the Frame: Creating a Female Artistic Legacy
The Neapolitan Novels and Female Friendship, Writing, Authorship
5. Mapping Urban Feminine Topographies
Walking the Streets of Topographic Memory in Troubling Love
Symbolic and Literal Labyrinth in the Neapolitan Novels
From Naples to Turin: Urban Itineraries of Abandonment
Epilogue: Reverse Maps, Familial Objects, and Open Frames in The Lying Life of Adults
Notes
Works Cited
Index
About the author
Stiliana Milkova Rousseva is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Italian at Oberlin College, USA.
Summary
"A model of academic praxis." - Public Books
Elena Ferrante as World Literature is the first English-language monograph on Italian writer Elena Ferrante, whose four Neapolitan Novels (2011-2014) became a global phenomenon. The book proposes that Ferrante constructs a theory of feminine experience which serves as the scaffolding for her own literary practice. Drawing on the writer’s entire textual corpus to date, Stiliana Milkova examines the linguistic, psychical, and corporeal-spatial realities that constitute the female subjects Ferrante has theorized. At stake in Ferrante’s theory/practice is the articulation of a feminine subjectivity that emerges from the structures of patriarchal oppression and that resists, bypasses, or subverts these very structures.
Milkova’s inquiry proceeds from Ferrante’s theory of frantumaglia and smarginatura to explore mechanisms for controlling and containing the female body and mind, forms of female authorship and creativity, and corporeal negotiations of urban topography and patriarchal space. Elena Ferrante as World Literature sets forth an interdisciplinary framework for understanding Ferrante's texts and offers an account of her literary and cultural significance today.
Foreword
Examines the global impact and relevance of Elena Ferrante's narratives of feminine identity.
Additional text
Elena Ferrante as World Literature descends into the depths of Ferrante's novels to trace hitherto unexplored continuities between them and their dialogue with texts of other nations on themes and issues of transnational significance. Milkova's brilliant analysis sanctions Ferrante's socially, culturally, and spatially profoundly Italian stories as World Literature, thus providing scholarly foundations for an understanding of their high capacity for circulation across national borders and their resounding global success. This book will not only be an indispensable tool for scholars and students of Italian, comparative, and world literature worldwide; it will also appeal to the common readers and enthusiasts of Ferrante's fiction.
