29/08/2018
Last Saturday, on her weekend column for The Guardian, Elena Ferrante wrote about motherhood, one of the crucial topics of her novels:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/aug/25/elena-ferrante-one-morning-i-looked-at-myself-in-the-mirror-and-recognised-my-mother.
We will dedicate to the topic of motherhood in Elena Ferrante a class of the course. This is the entire syllabus:
Week 1 - Anonymity and Authorship: During the first introductory class the figure of the writer Elena Ferrante will be presented. We will discuss their choice of anonymity and their peculiar idea of authorship making specific reference to Ferrante’s letters and interviews.
Week 2 – Female Friendship: The analysis of “My Brilliant Friend” will start, during the second week, with a focus on the core theme of the friendship between Elena and Lila. We will make comparisons with other novels centred on the topic of female friendship, a relatively rare theme in Western literary production.
Week 3 – Naples and the City: The class will be dedicated to the relationship of the novels’ protagonists with the space of the city where most of the story is settled, Naples. References to other Neapolitan women writers such as Anna Maria Ortese and Fabrizia Ramondino will be made.
Week 4 – Mythology: The story of Partenope (the Siren who, according to local mythology, founded Naples) will be presented in order to discuss Ferrante’s re-writing of the myth.
Week 5 – Violence: We will analyse the different forms of violence (gender-based violence, political violence, cultural violence) represented in “My Brilliant Friend” with the aim to understand the role they play in the Italian and Neapolitan context mirrored in the novel.
Week 6 – Organised Crime: The class will consist in an overview on the issue of organised crime in Italy and, specifically, on the Neapolitan phenomenon of Camorra. This will offer a broader contextualisation of Ferrante’s work and will allow a comparison with other contemporary Italian cultural productions on the topic, such as the novel and tv series Gomorrah, both written by Roberto Saviano.
Week 7 – Feminism: The connections of Ferrante’s work to feminist theory and history will be considered during this class. Specific references will be made to the history of Italian women’s movement and to the role these events have in “My Brilliant Friend”.
Week 8 – Love: Feminist theories on romantic love will be analysed during this class in order to disentangle the intricate web of relationships and desires that populate the quartet’s plot.
Week 9 – Motherhood: The relationship of the protagonists with their mothers and, in turn, the behaviour of Elena and Lila as mothers will be the core of this class. We will compare Ferrante’s representation of motherhood with that proposed by other Italian women writers.
Week 10 – Writing: We will look at the complex symbolism that in “My Brilliant Friend” is attributed to the act of writing, with the aim of establishing an association between the protagonists’ writing and the work of the mysterious author Elena Ferrante.
For a long time, I felt that to stop loving her was the only way I had to love myself
