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ACE Short Course on Elena Ferrante
ACE Short Course on Elena Ferrante
Enigmatic and mysterious literary genius Elena Ferrante and her : My Brilliant Friend
Course Outline
Ranked by time as one of the most influential people of the year in 2016, the italian writer elena ferrante is among the literary cases of the new millennium. the author’s decision to remain anonymous – elena ferrante is, in fact, a pseudonym – intrigued readers all around the world who have cultivated the desire to know more about the mysterious writer. is ferrante a woman or a man? what if a collective of artists wrote the books that became a phenomenon? are the books autobiographical? recent journalistic inquiries have tried to disclose ferrante’s identity, but, as the author declared in a few interviews, the choice of anonymity reflects the aim to let the texts speak. following the writer’s suggestions, this course aims at providing the tools for a deep understanding of “my brilliant friend” quartet, ferrante’s most acclaimed and popular work. “my brillian friends” consists of four bestselling novels published between 2011 and 2014 (my brilliant friend, story of the new name, those who leave and those who stay and story of the lost child) and it will be soon adapted into a tv series produced by hbo. the quartet tells the intense story of two female friends (elena and lila) who navigate through the turmoil of italian post-war social change, facing the challenges of being women and the adversities of life in the poor mezzogiorno. in class, we will discuss the story of elena and lila through the analysis of selected excerpts. moreover, we will disentangle ferrante’s popular thus complex narrative through references to the socio-historical italian context in which the quartet is settled, as well as through a comparison with ferrante’s previous works (troubling love, the days of abandonment and the lost daughter) and other italian novels. the course is designed both for students who have read my brilliant friend and for those who would like to start reading the books with a deeper awareness of ferrante’s poetics.
for further information see: https://www.ucc.ie/en/ace/courses/shortcourses/sc0154/