E. Ferrante: Neapolit. Quart

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet: Gender, Class, and Identity in Contemporary Italy In the Neapolitan Quartet, Elena Ferrante sketches a genealogical cycle that extends from the 1950s to the first decade of the new millennium while following the friendship between two women from working class Naples. In this course, we will focus on the main themes of the novels, such as the tension between standard Italian and dialect, the elusive notion of progress, women’s solidarity and rivalry, and changes in Italian society and culture from the aftermath of World War II to the present. We will also discuss the reasons behind Elena Ferrante’s global and extraordinary success and analyze Saverio Costanzo’s cinematic adaptation of her work for the HBO series My Brilliant Friend. Conducted in Italian.