Elena Ferrante as World Literature

Description

"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.

Stiliana Milkova Rousseva is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Italian at Oberlin College, USA.

Stiliana Milkova has written a compelling and highly readable study of Ferrante's fiction [that] is interested more than anything about what the text itself reveals about Ferrante's poetics and politics, explaining as a result, what makes Ferrante's texts so addictive to read and such a pleasure to analyze. This one is for the academics and casual fans alike. * EuropeNow * Written with remarkable competence and flair, and accompanied by a rich bibliography, Elena Ferrante as World Literature constitutes an essential reference for Ferrante scholars and an ideal textbook for any university course on Elena Ferrante in the anglophone world. * Italian Studies * Stiliana Milkova leads us on a tour through Ferrante's world of women and female subjectivity, exploring the themes of mothers and daughters, friendships between women, women and their bodies, girls and their dolls, women reading and writing--and their connections from novel to novel--in a fascinating and thought-provoking way that makes us want to go back to the books with a new understanding. * Ann Goldstein, English Translator of Elena Ferrante's novels * A very rich and original perspective. * Leggendaria (trans. by Bloomsbury Academic) * Milkova stands as a rightful successor to the Ferrantean exegetic legacy. She does not read against Ferrante, but alongside her, turning what others might perceive as an intrusive presence into a stamp of approval. * Public Books * Essential for exploring the urban and topographical plan of Ferrante's work. * Bollettino '900 (trans. by Bloomsbury Academic) * Elena Ferrante as World Literature makes a compelling argument for the exceptionality of Elena Ferrante's work as a site of entanglement of multiple cultural traditions, interdisciplinary lines of enquiry, and trans-linguistic negotiation. While engaging in productive dialogue with existing scholarship, this book proposes its own profoundly original reading of the entire Ferrante corpus. Subverting traditional discourses of motherhood and femininity by de-constructing and de-framing women's bodies, Ferrante's new subjects emerge, in Stiliana Milkova's powerful account, from the 'male cage' of patriarchal structures to build new genealogies of women as creators, authors, translators. This is a milestone in Ferrante scholarship and an essential tool for teachers and students of Ferrante's oeuvre. * Enrica Maria Ferrara, Teaching Fellow of Italian, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, and editor of Posthumanism in Italian Literature and Film: Boundaries and Identity (2019) * Stiliana Milkova masterfully leads her readers through the 'feminine labyrinth-polis' that Elena Ferrante has created. Like the figure of Ariadne that she examines, Milkova meticulously traces the rich web of motifs that generate Ferrante's 'universal feminine imaginary,' deftly accounting for the power of these novels. * Maria Truglio, Professor of Italian and Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Pennsylvania State University, USA, and author of Italian Children's Literature and National Identity: Childhood, Melancholy, Modernity (2017) * 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. * Adalgisa Giorgio, Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies, University of Bath, UK, and co-editor of Motherhood in Literature and Culture: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Europe (2017) *