Elena Ferrante
Elena Ferrante is one of the best-known Italian writers working today, bringing the contemporary Italian novel to a global audience. She is known for her treatment of women’s psychology, her depictions of the city of Naples, and as a writer of the mother-daughter bond in 20th-century Italian culture. Her work has been widely translated, and has been adapted for radio, film and television, and theatre. The ‘Neapolitan Novels’ alone have sold 13,000,000 copies in over 40 countries.
Ferrante writes under a pseudonym, a decision which has been the subject of considerable controversy. For this reason, biographical details about ‘Elena Ferrante’ are difficult to come by and remain unconfirmed. From the snapshots of herself which she provides in various of her non-fictional writings, we can tentatively infer that she was born and raised in Naples but does not now reside there, and that she is a mother of daughters, studied Classics, had a prior non-literary career, and that writing has been a preoccupation throughout her life. Ferrante is deliberately careful about revealing biographical information. Her reticence is owed to a personal theory of authorship she has embraced, namely that the works of a writer should speak for themselves, without the public intervention of the author to guide their interpretation or introduce them to readers. On this topic she writes:
I believe that today it’s a mistake to fail to protect writing by guaranteeing it an autonomous space, far from the demands of the media and the marketplace. My own small cultural battle, now two decades long, is aimed mostly at readers. I think authors should be sought in the books they put their names to, not in the physical person who is writing or in his or her private life. (Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey, 2016, p. 351)
All Ferrante’s work in Italian has been published by Edizioni e/o, a small Roman publishing house. Her first three novels ‒ L’amore molesto (1992), I giorni dell’abbandono (2002), and La figlia oscura (2006), now sometimes collectively referred to as Cronache del mal d’amore ‒ feature female narrators facing a crisis of identity: the death of a mother, infidelity and divorce, the transition phase when one’s own children become adults. Temporally concise and psychologically dense, Delia’s, Olga’s, and Leda’s stories stage a confrontation with a disturbed maternal past, a theme which Ferrante confirms as critical to her writing: ‘The roles of daughters and mothers are central to my books; sometimes I think I haven’t written about anything else’ (Frantumaglia, p. 251). Directly inspired by the third novel, La figlia oscura, in 2007 Ferrante published La spiaggia di notte, a short story illustrated by Mara Cerri. The tale of a doll abandoned on the beach at night, mirroring the doll with which Leda becomes obsessed in La figlia oscura, the book has a fairy-tale quality and is a children’s story, though some of the disturbing themes and nightmarish imagery may suggest that Ferrante is writing also for adults.
Elena Ferrante’s early work has been recognised by scholars of Italian women’s writing as innovative and exciting (see below Giorgio 2002; Benedetti 2007; Lucamante 2008; Sambuco 2012; Milkova 2013). It was also appreciated within Italian literary circles: L’amore molesto won the 1992 Premio Procida-Isola di Arturo-Elsa Morante and was shortlisted for the Premio Strega, Italy’s most prestigious literary prize, in the same year. From 2005, the early novels began to appear in English translation by prize-winning literary translator Ann Goldstein. These were published by Edizioni e/o’s sister company in New York, Europa Editions. The Days of Abandonment (2005) was followed by Troubling Love (2006) and The Lost Daughter (2008). The translation of La spiaggia di notte, The Beach at Night, came later, in 2016, once Elena Ferrante had become a household name.
Though she writes pseudonymously, Ferrante is by no means anonymous: she has given countless interviews and has responded with candour to the queries of journalists and readers. In 2003, the first edition of La frantumaglia appeared, a collection of letters and interviews which is now a key point of reference for criticism of Ferrante’s works. In it, she details aspects of her philosophies of writing and authorship, and a vision of feminine psychic life which has become central to how her works are interpreted. The collection has appeared in two subsequent editions, in 2007 and 2016 ‒ the latter being released in English as Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey simultaneously with the Italian edition ‒, containing further correspondence, interviews, and discussion generated by the publication and global success of the so-called ‘Neapolitan Novels’.
The series of four novels, published in Italian between 2011 and 2014 under the collective title L’amica geniale and in English, also translated by Goldstein, between 2012 and 2015 as the ‘Neapolitan Novels’, became international best-sellers and sparked the phenomenon now known as ‘Ferrante Fever’. The international recognition was in part generated by a 2013 article for The New Yorker by James Wood, in which he argued that Elena Ferrante was the author of ‘remarkable, lucid, austerely honest novels’ that deserved to be better known. L’amica geniale [My Brilliant Friend], Storia del nuovo cognome [The Story of a New Name], Storia di chi fugge e di chi resta [Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay], and Storia della bambina perduta [The Story of the Lost Child] detail the tumultuous relationship of two friends growing up in Naples in the post-war years, Elena Greco and Lila Cerullo, as they are variously united and divided by the game of life. The ‘Neapolitan Novels’ span over 60 years and allude to elements of the political and social upheaval of the 20th century. They also confront the central themes of mother-daughter relationships and female identity-construction which characterised Ferrante’s earlier novels. The Story of the Lost Child, the final instalment of the series, was one of The New York Times’ 10 best books of 2015 (The New York Times, 2 December 2015). Elena Ferrante was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of 2016 (https://time.com/collection-post/4299844/elena-ferrante-2016-time-100/).
As her popularity increased, speculation about Ferrante’s identity has become increasingly frenzied. Various theories have emerged during the years in which Ferrante has been active, but the peak of the controversy surrounding her absence from the public sphere came in 2016, with the publication of an article by Claudio Gatti for Il Sole 24 Ore claiming to have unearthed the ‘true’ Ferrante (https://st.ilsole24ore.com/art/cultura/2016-10-02/elena-ferrante-tracce-dell-autrice-ritrovata-105611.shtml?uuid=ADEqsgUB&refresh_ce=1). The report, of dubious ethical character, generated a considerable backlash, but remains a hypothesis. Readers and critics of Elena Ferrante were largely united in their confirmation that to seek to expose the ‘real’ author behind the novels in this way was not only an invasion of individual privacy, but a blatant disregard of the mode of authorship which Ferrante has adopted (see Alfano 2016 and Winterson 2016).
In 2018, Ferrante was invited to become a weekly columnist for The Guardian. These columns, accompanied by the illustrations of Andrea Ucini and translated once more by Goldstein, address topics including pregnancy and maternity, writing, love, fear, and death. The articles were collected in L’invenzione occasionale in 2018, which appeared in English in 2019 as Incidental Inventions. In them, Ferrante offers further brief glimpses of her personality and her life. In her latest novel, La vita bugiarda degli adulti (2019) [The Lying Life of Adults, 2020], she returns once more to Naples and to the perspective of the female narrator. La vita bugiarda is a stark exploration of the conflicted emotional life of a teenager, Giovanna Trada, as she struggles with the lies involved in forming a coherent identity and the hypocrisy of the adults who surround her.
In 2021 (17-19 November), she was invited to give three lectures in the prestigious Umberto Eco lecture series of the University of Bologna, which culminated in the volume of essays I margini e il dettato (2021) [In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing, 2022]. Here, Ferrante provides further comment on her identity as a writer and a reader of literary texts, and on the manifold sources which have influenced her thought and style, from Dante Alighieri to the Italian feminist writings of the 1970s and 1980s.
Elena Ferrante is an exciting and much-discussed contemporary author whose work continues to expand the possibilities for writing the female subject in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It is pleasing to note, as Goldstein’s recent translations of Anna Maria Ortese’s Neapolitan Chronicles (New York: New Vessel Press, 2018) and Elsa Morante’s Arthur’s Island (New York: Liveright, 2019) indicate, that the global appeal of Ferrante’s work appears to be leading to the recognition of other significant Italian women writers of the 20th century beyond national borders.
Compiled by Rebecca Walker (Dublin) with Adalgisa Giorgio (Bath)
Bibliography
Fiction
L’amore molesto (Rome: Edizioni e/o, 1992)
I giorni dell’abbandono (Rome: Edizioni e/o, 2002)
La figlia oscura (Rome: Edizioni e/o, 2006)
La spiaggia di notte (Rome: Edizioni e/o, 2007)
L’amica geniale (Rome: Edizioni e/o, 2011)
Storia del nuovo cognome (Rome: Edizioni e/o, 2012)
Storia di chi fugge e di chi resta (Rome: Edizioni e/o, 2013)
Storia della bambina perduta (Rome: Edizioni e/o, 2014)
La vita bugiarda degli adulti (Rome: Edizioni e/o, 2019)
Essays, Correspondence, and Newspaper Articles
La frantumaglia (Rome: Edizioni e/o, 2003; 2007; 2016)
L’invenzione occasionale (Rome: Edizioni e/o, 2019)
‘L’amica geniale e gentile di Dante’ (la Repubblica: Robinson, 24 aprile 2021, pp. 2-5)
‘“I have a lot of questions for you”: Elena Ferrante talks to Marina Abramović’ (Financial Times, 24 September 2021). Available online at https://www.ft.com/content/009042c7-efac-4003-a3b1-5945a0cf9270
I margini e il dettato (Rome: Edizioni e/o, 2021)
Translations into Foreign Languages
English
The Days of Abandonment, trans. by Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa, 2005)
Troubling Love, trans. by Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa, 2006)
The Lost Daughter, trans. by Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa, 2008)
My Brilliant Friend, trans. by Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa, 2012)
The Story of a New Name, trans. by Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa, 2013)
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, trans. by Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa, 2014)
The Story of the Lost Child, trans. by Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa, 2015)
The Beach at Night, trans. by Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa, 2016)
Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey, trans. by Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa, 2016)
Incidental Inventions, trans. by Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa, 2018)
The Lying Life of Adults, trans. by Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa, 2020)
In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing, trans. by Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa Editions, 2022)
Criticism
Alfano, Barbara: ‘The Fact of the Matter: Ethics and Materiality in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels’ (Italian Quarterly, 52.203-206, 2015 [© 2018], pp. 24-41)
—: ‘The Honest Truth: Ferrante’s Frantumaglia’ (Arcade. Literature, the Humanities, & the World, 22 October 2016) available online at https://arcade.stanford.edu/content/honest-truth-ferrantes-frantumaglia
—: ‘Il mondo vero: Etica e materia nella tetralogia napoletana di Elena Ferrante’ in AATI Online Working Papers. Proceedings of the AATI Conference, Naples (Italy), 22-25 June 2016 available online at https://bancheri.utm.utoronto.ca/aati-online/wpapers/viewer.html?file=../papers/c719f61386dcc540893df8f3bfa03362.pdf
—: ‘The Weight of the Paternal: Authorship and Gustave Flaubert’s Legacy in Elena Ferrante’s The Lying Life of Adults’ (Romance Studies. Special Issue: Comparative Approaches to Elena Ferrante: Traumas, Bodies, Languages ed. by Katrin Wehling-Giorgi and Stiliana Milkova Rousseva, 41.4, 2023, pp. 320-335)
Alfonzetti, Giovanna: ‘Il dialetto “molesto” in Elena Ferrante’ in Dialetto e società ed. by Gianna Marcato (Padua: Cleup, 2018, pp. 305-314)
Alsop, Elizabeth: ‘Femmes Fatales: “La fascinazione di morte” in Elena Ferrante’s L’amore molesto and I giorni dell’abbandono’ (Italica, 91.3, 2014, pp. 466-485)
Avalle, Arianna: ‘The Ultimate Ferrante Experience: Convergence Culture, Literary Tourism, and the Quest for Authenticity’ (Italian Culture, 39.1, 2021, pp. 19-32)
Badley, Graham Francis: ‘Autoethnography as Practice and Process: Toward an Honest Appraisal?’ (Qualitative Inquiry, 29.7, 2022, pp. 851–860)
Bajada, Jasmine: ‘Mothers, Daughters, and Damaged Legs: Mother-Daughter Relationships in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels and Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk’ (Antae Journal, 7.1, 2020, pp. 12-26)
Bazzoni, Alberica: ‘The Interrupted Temporality of Trauma in Elena Ferrante’s The Days of Abandonment and Goliarda Sapienza’s Compulsory Destiny’ in Trauma Narratives in Italian and Transnational Women’s Writing ed. by Tiziana de Rogatis and Katrin Wehling-Giorgi (Rome: Sapienza University Press, 2022, pp. 211–235)
Benedetti, Laura: ‘Struggling with the Mother’ in The Tigress in the Snow: Motherhood and Literature in Twentieth-Century Italy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007, pp. 94-113)
—: ‘Il linguaggio dell’amicizia e della città: L’amica geniale di Elena Ferrante tra continuità e cambiamento’ (Quaderni d’italianistica, 33.2, 2012, pp. 171-187)
—: ‘Elena Ferrante in America’ (Allegoria, 73, 2016, pp. 111-117) available online at https://www.allegoriaonline.it/PDF/923.pdf
Bianchi, Irene: La madre sotto la pelle: genealogia e scrittura da Sibilla Aleramo a Elena Ferrante (Milan: PM Edizioni, 2023)
Binik, Oriana: ‘“Carriere devianti” smarginate: da Elena Ferrante al processo di desistenza dal crimine’ (Rassegna italiana di criminologia, 12.2, 2018, pp. 141-149)
Bojar, Karen: In Search of Elena Ferrante: The Novels and the Question of Authorship (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018)
Bokopoulus, Natalie: ‘We Are Always Us: The Boundaries of Elena Ferrante’ (Michigan Quarterly Review, 55.3, Summer 2016, pp. 396-419)
Bovo-Romoeuf, Martine: ‘Sensualité et obscénité dans L’amore molesto et I giorni dell’abbandono d’Elena Ferrante’ (Cahiers d’études italiennes, 1.5, 2006, pp. 129-138) available online at http://journals.openedition.org/cei/823
Bovo Romoeuf, Martine: ‘Riscritture del romanzo d’amore: “l'impossibile amoroso del reale” nei romanzi di Elena Ferrante e Milena Agus’ (Narrativa, 30, 2008, pp. 179-194)
Bullaro, Grace Russo: ‘The Era of the “Economic Miracle” and the Force of Context in Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend’ in The Works of Elena Ferrante. Reconfiguring the Margins ed. by Grace Russo Bullaro and Stephanie Love (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 15-44)
Bullaro, Grace Russo and Stephanie Love [eds]: The Works of Elena Ferrante: Reconfiguring the Margins (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)
Buonanno, Elda: La Frantumaglia: Elena Ferrante’s Fragmented Self (Berlin: Verlag Dr Müller, 2009)
Caffè, Emanuela: ‘Staging a Word: Overcoming and Recovering Familial Bonds in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels’ (Carte Italiane, 12.1, 2019, pp. 105-124) available online at https://escholarship.org/uc/item/89d1s175
—: ‘Global Feminism and Trauma in Elena Ferrante’s Saga My Brilliant Friend’ (MLN. Italian Issue: Elena Ferrante in a Global Context ed. by Tiziana de Rogatis, Stiliana Milkova, and Katrin Wehling-Giorgi, 136.1, 2021, pp. 32-53)
Calheiros, Maria Clara: ‘Elena Ferrante and Patriarchy. Lessons from L’amica geniale (My Brilliant Friend)’ (Humanities and Rights Global Network Journal, 1.1, 2019, pp. 207-229) available online at https://www.humanitiesandrights.com/journal/index.php/har/article/view/21
Caputi, Mary: ‘“The Known Footsteps of My Mother”: The Power of the Abyss in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels’ (Theory & Event, 23.3, 2020, pp. 641-663)
Cardone, Lucia: ‘Sensibili differenze. L’amore molesto da Ferrante a Martone’ in Filmare il femminismo. Studi sulle donne nel cinema e nei media ed. by Lucia Cardone and Sara Filippelli (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2015, pp. 95-104)
Carvalho, Richard: ‘Smarginatura and Spiragli: Uses of Infinity in Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet’ (Allegoria, 77, 2018, pp. 94-111) available online at https://www.allegoriaonline.it/PDF/1103.pdf
—: ‘Innocence Redeemed’ (Reading in Translation, 31 August 2020) available online at https://readingintranslation.com/2020/08/31/innocence-redeemed/
Caserta, Silvia: ‘World Literature and the Italian Literary Canon: From Elena Ferrante to Natalia Ginzburg’ (Modern Languages Open, 1, 2019, pp. 1-18)
Cauchi-Santoro, Roberta: ‘Writing from the Womb: A Cixousian Reading of Elena Ferrante’s La figlia oscura’ in Femminismo e femminismi nella letteratura italiana dall’Ottocento al XXI secolo ed. by Sandra Parmegiani and Michela Prevedello (Florence: SEI, 2018, pp. 141-155)
—: ‘Elena Ferrante’s Women Intellectuals: Writing and the Paradoxical Relationship to the Mother’ in Female Cultural Production in Modern Italy: Literature, Art and Intellectual History ed. by Sharon Hecker and Catherine Ramsey-Portolano (New York: Palgrave, 2023, pp. 53–66)
—: ‘A Porous Mediterranean Écriture Féminine: Elena Ferrante’s L’amore molesto’ in Unframing and Reframing Mediterranean Spaces and Identities ed. by Giovanna Summerfield and Rosario Pollicino (Leiden: Brill, 2024, pp. 88–102)
Cauchi-Santoro, Roberta and Costanza Barchiesi [eds]: Ferrante Unframed: Authorship, Reception and Feminist Praxis in the Works of Elena Ferrante (Florence: Società Editrice Fiorentina, 2021)
Cavanaugh, Jillian R.: ‘Indexicalities of Language in Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels: Dialect and Italian as Markers of Social Value and Difference’ in The Works of Elena Ferrante. Reconfiguring the Margins ed. by Grace Russo Bullaro and Stephanie Love (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 45-70)
Chihaya, Sarah, Merve Emre, Katherine Hill, and Jill Richards: The Ferrante Letters: An Experiment in Collective Criticism (New York: Columbia UP, 2020)
Collina, Beatrice: ‘L’amicizia geniale: origini di un successo. Louisa May Alcott e Elena Ferrante’ (Montesquieu.it, 11, 2019, pp. 1-13) available online at https://montesquieu.unibo.it/article/download/10044/9850/33018
Conti, Eleonora: ‘Abiti madri e figlie ne L’amore molesto di Elena Ferrante’ (Lettera Zero, 1, 2015, pp. 103-113)
—: ‘”Smarginature”: lo scarto tra vita e scrittura ne L’amica geniale di Elena Ferrante’ (Lettera Zero, 4, 2017, pp. 69-78)
Coronato, Rocco: ‘L’amica poco congeniale. Elena Ferrante contro l’immedesimazione’ (Allegoria, 73, 2016, pp. 118-122) available online at https://www.allegoriaonline.it/PDF/924.pdf
Corrigan, Yuri: ‘Comparative Demonologies: Dostoevsky and Ferrante on the Boundaries of the Self’ (Religion & Literature, 49.2, 2017, pp. 23-45)
Crispino, Anna Maria and Marina Vitale [eds]: Dell’ambivalenza. Dinamiche della narrazione in Elena Ferrante, Julie Otsuka e Goliarda Sapienza (Rome: Iacobelli, 2016)
Dahlman, Roberta Colonna: ‘Strategie di narrazione retrospettiva nel romanzo I giorni dell’abbandono di Elena Ferrante’ in Edito, inedito, riedito: saggi dall’XI Congresso degli italianisti scandinavi, Università del Dalarna, Falun, 9-11 June 2016 ed. by Vera Nigrisoli Wärnhjelm, Alessandro Aresti, Gianluca Colella, and Marco Gargiulo (Pisa: Pisa UP, 2017, pp. 199-212)
De Francisci, Enza: ‘Translating and Rewriting Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend at the National Theatre’ (The Translator, 29.3, 2023, pp. 281–296)
Degli Esposti, Chiara: ‘Wandering Women: Feminist Urban Experiences in Simone de Beauvoir and Elena Ferrante’ (Annali d’Italianistica, 37, 2019, pp. 153-175)
De Rogatis, Tiziana: ‘L’amore molesto di Elena Ferrante. Mito classico, riti di iniziazione e identità femminile’ (Allegoria, 69-70, 2014, pp. 273-308)
— [ed.]: Il libro in questione. L'amica geniale (Special section, Allegoria, 73, 2016, pp. 109-211) available online at https://www.allegoriaonline.it/index.php/i-numeri-precedenti/allegoria-n-73
—: ‘Elena Ferrante e il Made in Italy. La costruzione di un immaginario femminile e napoletano’ in Made in Italy e cultura ed. by Daniele Balicco (Palermo: Palumbo, 2016, pp. 288-317)
—: ‘Metamorfosi del tempo. Il ciclo dell’Amica geniale’ (Allegoria, 73, 2016, pp. 123-137) available online at https://www.allegoriaonline.it/PDF/899.pdf
—: ‘Metamorphosis and Rebirth: Greek Mythology and Initiation Rites in Elena Ferrante’s Troubling Love’ in The Works of Elena Ferrante. Reconfiguring the Margins ed. by Grace Russo Bullaro and Stephanie Love (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 185-206)
—: ‘Cerimoniale iniziatico e strutture rituali ne L’amore molesto, I giorni dell’abbandono e La figlia oscura di Elena Ferrante’ in Nel nome della madre. Ripensare le figure della maternità ed. by Daniela Brogi, Tiziana de Rogatis, Cristiana Franco, and Lucinda Spera (Bracciano: Del Vecchio, 2017, pp. 71-92)
—: ‘L’amore molesto, I giorni dell’abbandono e La figlia oscura di Elena Ferrante: riti di passaggio, cerimoniali iniziatici e nuove soggettività’ in Femminismo e femminismi nella letteratura italiana dall’Ottocento al XXI secolo ed. by Sandra Parmegiani and Michela Prevedello (Florence: SEI, 2018, pp. 99-119)
—: Elena Ferrante. Parole chiave (Rome: Edizioni e/o, 2018)
—: Elena Ferrante’s Key Words, trans. by Will Schutt (New York: Europa, 2019)
—: ‘La vita bugiarda degli adulti di Elena Ferrante’ (la Repubblica, 29 November 2019, p. 48)
—: ‘The Truth That Lies Behind the Lies’, trans. by Serena Todesco (Reading in Translation, 31 August 2020 available online at https://readingintranslation.com/2020/08/31/the-truth-that-lies-behind-the-lies/
—: ‘Global Perspectives, Trauma, and the Global Novel: Ferrante’s Poetics between Storytelling, Uncanny Realism, and Dissolving Margins’ (MLN. Italian Issue: Elena Ferrante in a Global Context ed. by Tiziana de Rogatis, Stiliana Milkova, and Katrin Wehling-Giorgi, 136.1, 2021, pp. 6-31)
—: ‘The Handmaid’s Liberation: Bewitched Worlds, Underground Stories, Dystopian Narratives in Elsa Morante, Elena Ferrante and Margaret Atwood’ (Romance Studies, 40.3–4, 2022, pp. 162–179)
—: ‘Transnational Perspectives, Gender and Storytelling. Elena Ferrante, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Margaret Atwood’ (Allegoria, 85, 2022, pp. 122–149)
de Rogatis, Tiziana, Stiliana Milkova, and Katrin Wehling-Giorgi [eds]: Elena Ferrante in a Global Context (MLN. Italian Issue, 136.1, 2021)
—: ‘Introduction: Friendship and Scholarship’ (MLN. Italian Issue: Elena Ferrante in a Global Context ed. by Tiziana de Rogatis, Stiliana Milkova, and Katrin Wehling-Giorgi, 136.1, 2021, pp. 3-5)
De Rooy, Ronald: ‘Identità, memoria e passato nell’opera di Patrizia Valduga e Elena Ferrante’ in La forma del passato: questioni di identità in opere letterarie e cinematografiche italiane a partire dagli ultimi anni ottanta ed. by Sabina Gola and Laura Rorato (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007, pp. 159-170)
Di Bari, Francesca, Chiara Lagani, and Ann Goldstein: ‘A Journey of Theatrical Translation from Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels: From Fanny & Alexander’s No Awkward Questions on Their Part to Story of a Friendship (Including an Interview with Chiara Lagani) [translated by Ann Goldstein]’ (MLN. Italian Issue: Elena Ferrante in a Global Context ed. by Tiziana de Rogatis, Stiliana Milkova, and Katrin Wehling-Giorgi, 136.1, 2021, pp. 224-246)
Di Martino, Loredana: ‘Addressing Each Other’s Eyes Directly: From Adriana Cavarero’s “Relating Narratives” to Elena Ferrante’s Intersectional Ethics of Narrative Relations’ (gender/sexuality/Italy, ‘Themed Section’, ‘Beside, Besides, and B-sides: Collaborations as Feminist and Decolonizing Practices’, 7, 2020 [publication date: February 2021], pp. 49-75) available online at https://www.gendersexualityitaly.com/5-addressing-each-others-eyes-directly/
Di Rosa, Rossella: ‘Material and Trans-corporeal Identities in Ferrante’s and Atwood’s Narratives’ (MLN. Italian Issue: Elena Ferrante in a Global Context ed. by Tiziana de Rogatis, Stiliana Milkova, and Katrin Wehling-Giorgi, 136.1, 2021, pp. 143-163)
Domínguez-Rué, Emma: ‘Negotiating Feminine Identity Through the Maternal Bond in Elena Ferrante’s Troubling Love’ (Journal of Gender Studies, published online 2024, DOI: 10.1080/09589236.2024.2318746)
Donnarumma, Raffaele: ‘Il melodramma, l’antimelodramma, la Storia: sull’Amica geniale di Elena Ferrante’ (Allegoria, 73, 2016, pp. 138-147) available online at https://www.allegoriaonline.it/PDF/925.pdf
Drake, Phillip: ‘Zoonotic Affinities: Woman-Dog Sickness and Multispecies Becoming in Elena Ferrante’s Days of Abandonment and Virginia Woolf ’s Flush’ (Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, 10.3, 2023, pp. 69–92)
Džiho-Šator, Aida and Amela Džiho-Hidović: ‘Gender and Violence in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, Elena Ferrante’s Tetralogy My Brilliant Friend and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus’ (DHS-Social Sciences and Humanities: Journal of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, 23, 2023, pp. 295–314)
Edwards, Natalie: ‘Gender and Generation: Elena Ferrante, Annie Ernaux and the Legacy of Simone de Beauvoir’ (Romance Studies, 40.3–4, 2022, pp. 180–194)
Elwell, Leslie: ‘Breaking Bonds: Refiguring Maternity in Elena Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter’ in The Works of Elena Ferrante: Reconfiguring the Margins ed. by Grace Russo Bullaro and Stephanie Love (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 237-269)
Faienza, Lucia: ‘La possibilità di dire “io”: un confronto tra Christa Wolf ed Elena Ferrante’ (Il capitale culturale: Studies on the Value of Cultural Heritage, 20, 2019, pp. 341-363)
Falkoff, Rebecca: ‘To Translate is to Betray: On the Elena Ferrante Phenomenon in Italy and the US’ (Public Books, 25 March 2015) available online at https://www.publicbooks.org/to-translate-is-to-betray-on-the-elena-ferrante-phenomenon-in-italy-and-the-us/
Falotico, Caterina: ‘Il ciclo dell’Amica geniale tra autobiografia, storia e metaletteratura’ (Forum Italicum, 49.1, 2015, pp. 92-118)
Fanning, Ursula: ‘From Cityscapes to Interiors: Public Spaces and “Private” Places in Contemporary Italian Women’s Writing’, in Women and the Public Sphere in Modern and Contemporary Italy: Essays for Sharon Wood ed. by Simona Storchi, Marina Spunta, and Maria Morelli (Leicester: Troubador, 2017, pp. 77-89)
Ferrara, Enrica Maria: ‘Performative Realism and Post-Humanism in The Days of Abandonment' in The Works of Elena Ferrante: Reconfiguring the Margins ed. by Grace Russo Bullaro and Stephanie Love (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 129-157)
—: ‘Elena Ferrante e la questione dell’identità’ (Oblio, 26-27, 2017, pp. 47-55)
—: ‘L’identità postumana di Elena Ferrante, ovvero l’esplosione della pentola di rame ne L’amica geniale’ (Carte allineate: recensioni e testi, 57, June 2017) available online at http://cartescoperterecensionietesti.blogspot.com/2017/06/enrica-maria-ferrara-lidentita.html
—: ‘Posthumanism and Identity in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels in Posthumanism in Italian Literature and Film ed. by Enrica Maria Ferrara (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, pp. 93-116)
—: ‘Reviewed: The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante’ (RTE Culture, 15 September 2020) available online at https://www.rte.ie/culture/2020/0909/1164200-reviewed-the-lying-life-of-adults-by-elena-ferrante/
—: ‘Grief and Posthuman Identity in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels: The Precarious Life of Women and the Right to Disappear’ (MLN. Italian Issue: Elena Ferrante in a Global Context ed. by Tiziana de Rogatis, Stiliana Milkova, and Katrin Wehling-Giorgi, 136.1, 2021, pp. 96-117)
—: ‘Posthumanism and Trauma: The Non-Anthropocentric World of Grief and Objects in Elena Ferrante and Catherine Dunne’ (Romance Studies. Special Issue: Comparative Approaches to Elena Ferrante: Traumas, Bodies, Languages ed. by Katrin Wehling-Giorgi and Stiliana Milkova Rousseva, 41.4, 2023, pp. 267-282)
Fusillo, Massimo: ‘Sulla smarginatura. Tre punti-chiave per Elena Ferrante’ (Allegoria, 73, 2016, pp. 148-153) available online at https://www.allegoriaonline.it/PDF/926.pdf
Gallippi, Franco: ‘Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend. In Search of Parthenope and the “Founding” of a New City’ in The Works of Elena Ferrante. Reconfiguring the Margins ed. by Grace Russo Bullaro and Stephanie Love (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 101-127)
—: ‘L’amica geniale di Elena Ferrante: alla ricerca di Parthenope’ (Rivista di Studi Italiani, 35.1, 2017, pp. 207-229)
Gambaro, Elisa: ‘Il fascino del regresso: Note su L’amica geniale di Elena Ferrante’ (Enthymema, 11, 2014, pp. 168-181)
—: ‘Splendori e miserie di una duplice affabulazione’ (Allegoria, 73, 2016, pp. 154-165) available online at https://www.allegoriaonline.it/PDF/927.pdf
—: ‘L’andirivieni di un braccialetto’. Review of La vita bugiarda degli adulti (L’Indice dei libri del mese, 1, 14 January 2020, p. 2) available online at https://www.lindiceonline.com/letture/elena-ferrante-la-vita-bugiarda-degli-adulti/
—: ‘The TV Series My Brilliant Friend: Screen-shaping Ferrante’s Storytelling for a Wider Audience’ (MLN. Italian Issue: Elena Ferrante in a Global Context ed. by Tiziana de Rogatis, Stiliana Milkova, and Katrin Wehling-Giorgi, 136.1, 2021, pp. 209-223)
Geue, Tom: ‘Elena Ferrante as the Classics’ (Melbourne Historical Journal, 44.2, 2016, pp. 1-31) available online at https://theamphoraissue.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/the_amphora_44-2_2016_tom_geue.pdf
Ghezzo, Flora and Sara Teardo: ‘On Lila’s Traces: Bildung, Narration, and Ethics in Elena Ferrante’s L’amica geniale’, trans. by Ramsey McGlazer (MLN, 134.1, 2019, pp. 172-192)
Gibbons, Alison: ‘The “Dissolving Margins” of Elena Ferrante and the Neapolitan Novels: A Cognitive Approach to Fictionality, Authorial Intentionality, and Autofictional Reading Strategies’ (Narrative Inquiry, 29.2, 2019, pp. 391-417)
Giorgio, Adalgisa: ‘The Passion for the Mother: Conflicts and Idealizations in Contemporary Italian Narratives by Women’ in Writing Mothers and Daughters: Renegotiating the Mother in Western European Narratives by Women ed. by Adalgisa Giorgio (New York: Berghahn, 2002, pp. 119-154)
—: ‘Reading Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels with the Grain: The View of a Female Academic from Southern Italy’ in Women in Transition: Crossing Boundaries, Crossing Borders ed. by Maria-José Blanco and Claire Williams (New York: Routledge, 2021, pp. 185-203)
Glynn, Ruth: ‘Decolonising the Body of Naples: Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels’ (Annali d’Italianistica: Urban Space and the Body ed. by Silvia Ross and Giulio Giovannoni, 37, 2019, pp. 261-288)
Granacki, Alyssa: ‘The Lying Life of Narrators’ (Reading in Translation, 31 August 2020) available online at https://readingintranslation.com/2020/08/31/the-lying-life-of-narrators/
—: ‘Writing the “Woman Destroyed” in Elena Ferrante and Simone de Beauvoir’ (The Italianist, 42.2, 2023, pp. 1–10)
Guadagni, Annamaria: La leggenda di Elena Ferrante (Milan: Garzanti, 2021)
Guarro Romero, Adriana: ‘Narrative Friendships in Elisabetta Rasy’s Posillipo and Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels’ (Italica, 96.2, 2019, pp. 257-280)
Haaland, Torunn: ‘Between Past and Present, Self and Other: Liminality and the Transmission of Traumatic Memory in Elena Ferrante’s La figlia oscura’ in Transmissions of Memory. Echoes, Traumas, and Nostalgia in Post-War II Italian Culture ed. by Patrizia Sambuco (Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson UP, 2018, pp. 143-160)
Halla, Barbara: ‘Under His Watchful Eye: Family and Power in “The Lying Life of Adults”’ (Reading in Translation, 31 August 2020) available online at https://readingintranslation.com/2020/08/31/under-his-watchful-eye-family-and-power-in-the-lying-life-of-adults/
Heaney, Emma: ‘Daily Life Frequently Erupted Like a Slap: Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels as Narrative Intertexts of 1970s Italian Feminist Praxis’ (Textual Practice, 36.8, 2022, pp. 1309–1332)
Hodson, Esme: ‘Spectacular Women: Recovering the Feminine in Elena Ferrante’s I giorni dell’abbandono’ (Italian Studies, published online 15 May 2024, 14 pages, doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2024.2344214)
Karagoz, Claudia: ‘Cominciai senza volerlo a raccontarmi di mia madre: Delia’s Re-Telling of Amalia’s Story in Elena Ferrante’s L’amore molesto' in Amori molesti: The Mother-Daughter Relationship in Contemporary Italian Women’s Writing. PhD dissertation (University of California, Berkeley, 2001, pp. 71-103)
Kaya, Nilay: ‘Lost Dolls, Lost Souls in Elena Ferrante's La figlia oscura’ (Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale, 55, 2019, pp. 637-650)
Kirsch, Adam: ‘Starting from Home: Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels’ in The Global Novel: Writing the World in the 21st Century (New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2016)
Knight, John: Object Expression: Diligent Realism in the Works of Roland Barthes, Elena Ferrante, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Valeria Luiselli, and W. G. Sebald. PhD dissertation (City University of New York, 2021) available online at https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/4358/
Kobilj Cuic, Sanja: ‘Rompere il tabù: il tema dell’abbandono dei figli in Una donna di Sibilla Aleramo e La figlia oscura di Elena Ferrante’ (Raudem – Revista de estudios de las mujeres, 3, 2015, pp. 252-267) available online at http://ojs.ual.es/ojs/index.php/RAUDEM/article/view/630
Kotorri, Christian: ‘Sui “crimini così romanzeschi”: La vita bugiarda degli adulti di Elena Ferrante’ in Crisi, giovinezza e critica all'adultità ed. by Florian H. Geidner and Roberto Interdonato (Loveno di Menaggio: Villa Vigoni Editore, 2024, pp. 147-162)
Kurnick, David: ‘Ferrante, in History’ (Public Books, 15 December 2015) available online at https://www.publicbooks.org/ferrante-in-history/
—: ‘Alone with Language’ (Reading in Translation, 31 August 2020) available online at https://readingintranslation.com/2020/08/31/alone-with-language/
Lee, Alison: ‘Feminine Identity and Female Friendships in the “Neapolitan” Novels of Elena Ferrante’ (British Journal of Psychotherapy, 32.4, 2016, pp. 491-501)
Leung, King-Ho and Rebecca Walker: ‘Compliant and Impetuous: The Phenomenology of Existence in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels’ (Textual Practice, 2023, pp. 1–19)
Librandi, Rita: ‘Una lingua silenziosa: immaginare il dialetto negli scritti di Elena Ferrante’ (Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny, 66.2, 2019, pp. 385-398). Expanded version, by the same title, in Più di sacro che di profano: alcuni esempi di scritture femminili (Florence: Franco Cesati, 2020, pp. 169-188)
—: ‘Contrasti e alleanze di italiano e dialetto nella scrittura e nella “vita adulta” di Elena Ferrante’ in Più di sacro che di profano: alcuni esempi di scritture femminili (Florence: Franco Cesati, 2020, pp. 189-209)
Lillestrand, Ryan A.: ‘Smarginatura: The Art and Politics of Elena Ferrante’ (Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union, 2023, Article 12, pp. 115–126) available online at https://scholarship.claremont.edu/urceu/vol2023/iss1/12
Lockwood, Patricia: ‘I hate Nadia Beyond Reason. The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein’ (London Review of Books, 43.4, 18 February 2021) available online at https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n04/patricia-lockwood/i-hate-nadia-beyond-reason
Lombardi, Giancarlo: ‘Scambi d’identità: il recupero del corpo materno ne L’amore molesto’ (Romance Languages Annual, 10, 1999, pp. 288-291)
Love, Stephanie V.: ‘“An Educated Identity”: The School as a Modernist Chronotope in Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels’ in The Works of Elena Ferrante: Reconfiguring the Margins ed. by Grace Russo Bullaro and Stephanie V. Love (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 71-97)
Lucamante, Stefania: ‘The Prison-House of Marriage: Simone de Beauvoir and Elena Ferrante Discuss Abandonment’ in A Multitude of Women: The Challenges of the Contemporary Italian Novel (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008, pp. 80-108)
—: ‘For Sista Only? Smarginare l’eredità delle sorelle Morante e Ramondino, ovvero i limiti e la forza del post-femminismo di Elena Ferrante’ in Sorelle e sorellanza nella letteratura e nelle arti ed. by Claudia Cao and Marina Guglielmi (Florence: Franco Cesati, 2018, pp. 315-334)
—: ‘Undoing Feminism. The Neapolitan Novels of Elena Ferrante’ (Italica, 95.1, 2018, pp. 1-19)
Maksimowicz, Christine: ‘Maternal Failure and Its Bequest: Toxic Attachment in the Neapolitan Novels’ in The Works of Elena Ferrante. Reconfiguring the Margins ed. by Grace Russo Bullaro and Stephanie Love (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 207-236)
Mandolini, Nicoletta: ‘Telling the Abuse: A Feminist-Psychoanalytic Reading of Gender Violence, Repressed Memory, and Female Subjectivity in Elena Ferrante’s Troubling Love’ in The Works of Elena Ferrante. Reconfiguring the Margins ed. by Grace Russo Bullaro and Stephanie Love (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 271-292)
—: ‘Donne violente e donne violate. Genere e violenza nella tetralogia L’amica geniale di Elena Ferrante’ in Rappresentare la violenza di genere. Sguardi femministi tra critica, attivismo e scrittura ed. by Marina Bettaglio, Nicoletta Mandolini, and Silvia Ross (Milan: Mimesis, 2018, pp. 51-70)
Marchais, Nathalie: ‘Madre o Donna? Figure femminili in conflitto nei romanzi di Elena Ferrante’ (Ecritures, 2, 2006, pp. 45–57)
Marlow-Mann, Alex: ‘The Tears of Naples’ Daughters: Re-interpreting the sceneggiata in Mario Martone’s L’amore molesto’ (The Italianist, 29.2, 2009, pp. 199-213)
Massucco, Maria: Woundedness and Reintegration: The Phenomenology and Transmission of Women's Trauma in Modern and Contemporary Italy, PhD Dissertation (Stanford University, 2023)
McCarter, Stephanie: ‘Elena Ferrante’s Virgil. Rewriting the Aeneid in the Neapolitan Novels’ (Eidolon, 17 November 2016) available online at https://eidolon.pub/elena-ferrantes-vergil-2f6babd05f16
Milkova, Stiliana: ‘Mothers, Daughters, Dolls: On Disgust in Elena Ferrante’s La figlia oscura’ (Italian Culture, 31.2, 2013, pp. 91-109)
—: ‘Artistic Tradition and Feminine Legacy in Elena Ferrante’s L’amore molesto’ (California Italian Studies, 6, 2016, pp. 1-15) available online at https://escholarship.org/uc/item/15s5c850
—: ‘Elena Ferrante’s Visual Poetics: Ekphrasis in Troubling Love, My Brilliant Friend, and The Story of a New Name’ in The Works of Elena Ferrante. Reconfiguring the Margins ed. by Grace Russo Bullaro and Stephanie V. Love (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 159-182)
—: ‘The Translator’s Visibility or the Ferrante-Goldstein Phenomenon’ (Allegoria, 73, 2016, pp. 166-173) available online at https://www.allegoriaonline.it/PDF/928.pdf
—: ‘Il minotauro e la doppia Arianna: spazio liminale, labirinto urbano e città femminile ne L’amica geniale’ (Contemporanea, 15, 2018, pp. 75-86)
—: ‘Framing by Fragmentation: Elena Ferrante’s “Incidental Inventions”, Translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein’ (Reading in Translation, 11 November 2019) available online at www.readingintranslation.com/2019/11/11/self-construction-by-fragmentation-elena-ferrantes-incidental-inventions-translated-from-italian-by-ann-goldstein/
—: ‘Ferrante Breaks the Frame’ (Public Books, 9 September 2020) available online at https://www.publicbooks.org/ferrante-breaks-the-frame/
—: ‘Side by Side: Female Collaboration in Ferrante’s Fiction and Ferrante Studies’ (gender/sexuality/italy, ‘Invited Perspectives’, 7, 2020 [publication date: February 2021], pp. 92-102) available online at https://www.gendersexualityitaly.com/7-female-collaboration-ferrante/
—: ‘Beyond Postmodernism: Mirrors, Mises en Abîmes, and Labyrinths in Elena Ferrante’s Works’ (MLN. Italian Issue: Elena Ferrante in a Global Context ed. by Tiziana de Rogatis, Stiliana Milkova and Katrin Wehling-Giorgi, 136.1, 2021, pp. 54-74)
—: 'Mapping Turin’s Urban Topography in Elena Ferrante’s The Days of Abandonment' (Italian Culture, 39.1, 2021, pp. 1-11)
—: Elena Ferrante as World Literature (London; New York: Bloomsbury, 2021)
—: ‘The Trauma of Language Learning and Self-Translation in Elena Ferrante and Jhumpa Lahiri’ (Romance Studies. Special Issue: Comparative Approaches to Elena Ferrante: Traumas, Bodies, Languages ed. by Katrin Wehling-Giorgi and Stiliana Milkova Rousseva, 41.4, 2023, pp. 283-302)
Milkova Rousseva, Stiliana and Katrin Wehling-Giorgi: ‘Comparative Approaches to Elena Ferrante: Traumas, Bodies, Languages’ (Romance Studies. Special Issue: Comparative Approaches to Elena Ferrante: Traumas, Bodies, Languages ed. by Katrin Wehling-Giorgi and Stiliana Milkova Rousseva, 41.4, 2023, pp. 241-247)
Morelli, Maria: ‘Margins, Subjectivity, and Violence in Elena Ferrante’s Cronache del mal d’amore’ (Italian Studies. Mini Special Issue: Violence Against Women in Italian Literature ed. by Giorgia Alù and Sarah Patricia Hill, 76.3, 2021, pp. 329-341)
Moro, Carlotta: ‘The Gospel According to Elena Ferrante’ (Reading in Translation, 31 August 2020 available online at https://readingintranslation.com/2020/08/31/the-gospel-according-to-elena-ferrante/
—: ‘The Pursuit of Feminist Language in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet’ (The Italianist, 44.3, 2023, pp. 1–23)
—: ‘Breaking Out of the Cage of Anthropocentrism: Ecofeminism in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet and Other Essays’ (Romance Studies. Special Issue: Comparative Approaches to Elena Ferrante: Traumas, Bodies, Languages ed. by Katrin Wehling-Giorgi and Stiliana Milkova Rousseva, 41.4, 2023, pp. 303-319)
Mullenneaux, Lisa: ‘Burying Mother’s Ghost: Elena Ferrante’s Troubling Love’ (Forum Italicum, 41.1, 2007, pp. 246-250)
—: Naples’ Little Women: The Fiction of Elena Ferrante (New York: Pennington Press, 2016)
Orsi, Marianna: ‘Due partite di Cristina Comencini, La figlia oscura di Elena Ferrante e la demitizzazione della maternità’ (intervalla: To Be or Not to Be a Mother: Choice, Refusal, Reluctance and Conflict. Motherhood and Female Identity in Italian Literature and Culture. Essere o non essere madre: scelta, rifiuto, avversione e conflitto. Maternità e identità femminile nella letteratura e cultura italiane ed. by Laura Lazzari and Jiy Charnley. Special volume 1, 2016, pp. 94-110) available online at https://www.fus.edu/intervalla-files/svol1/9-MO.pdf
—: ‘Femminismi nell’opera di Elena Ferrante’ in Femminismo e femminismi nella letteratura italiana dall’Ottocento al XXI secolo ed. by Sandra Parmegiani and Michela Prevedello (Florence: SEI, 2018, pp. 245-266)
Panetta, Maria and Giuseppe Traina [eds]: Nuove ricerche su Elena Ferrante (Rome: Diacritica Edizioni, 2019) available online at http://diacritica.it/wp-content/uploads/6.-Nuove-ricerche-su-Elena-Ferrante-a-cura-di-G.-Traina-e-M.-Panetta.pdf
Paoli, Federica: ‘Dell’accettazione e del rifiuto: immagini e figure del materno da Elena Ferrante a Vanessa Ambrosecchio’ (Bollettino di italianistica, 2, 2005, pp. 159-172)
Parisi, Luciano: ‘Trauma e riparazione nell’Amore molesto di Elena Ferrante’ (Studi novecenteschi, 93, 2017, pp. 167-188)
—: Le forme dell’immaginazione nei romanzi di Domenico Starnone ed Elena Ferrante (MLN, 138.1, 2023, pp. 191–214)
Pesca, Carmela: ‘The Narrative Function of Clothing in Elena Ferrante’s Troubling Love’ (Altrelettere, October 2017, pp. 1-21) available online at https://www.altrelettere.uzh.ch/article/view/al_uzh-35
Petrovich Njegosh, Tatiana: 'Lamore molesto di Amalia e Delia' in Lo speccchio materno: Madri e figlie tra biografia e letteratura ed. by Anna Scacchi (Rome: Luca Sossella Editore, 2005, pp. 237-253)
Pickard, Susan: ‘On Becoming a Hag: Gender, Ageing and Abjection’ (Feminist Theory, 21.2, 2020, pp. 157-173)
Pinto, Isabella: ‘Intervista ad Adriana Cavarero. Filosofia della Narrazione e scrittura del sé: primi appunti sulla scrittura di Elena Ferrante’ (TestoeSenso, 17, 2016, pp. 1-14)
—: ‘Lavoro operaio, lavoro di cura e femminilizzazione del lavoro nella tetralogia de L’amica geniale di Elena Ferrante’ (L’ospite ingrato. Rivista online del Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerca Franco Fortini, 3-4, 2018, pp. 302-309) available online at http://www.ospiteingrato.unisi.it/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/3-4.19.-PINTO.pdf
—: ‘Elena Ferrante: Storie di affinità postumane’ (DWF. Sister of the Revolution. Letture politiche di fantascienza, 1-2.121-122, 2019, pp. 74-81)
—: ‘Storia della bambina perduta di Elena Ferrate: Il desiderio di narrare oltre la dichotomia autore/lettore’ in Nuove ricerche su Elena Ferrante ed. by Maria Panetta and Giuseppe Traina (Rome: Diacritica Edizioni, 2019, pp. 123-154) available online at http://diacritica.it/wp-content/uploads/6.-Nuove-ricerche-su-Elena-Ferrante-a-cura-di-G.-Traina-e-M.-Panetta.pdf
—: ‘“Discorso indiretto libero” e “soggettiva libera indiretta”. Leggere Elena Ferrante attraverso Pier Paolo Pasolini. Prime note sulla “narratrice traduttrice”’ (L’ospite ingrato. Rivista online del Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerca Franco Fortini, 7, 2020, pp. 49-66) available online at http://www.ospiteingrato.unisi.it/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/7.4.-PINTO.pdf
—: Elena Ferrante: Poetiche e politiche della soggettività (Milan: Mimesis, 2020)
Pinto, Isabella, Stiliana Milkova, and Adriana Cavarero: ‘Storytelling Philosophy and Self Writing – Preliminary Notes on Elena Ferrante: An Interview with Adriana Cavarero’ (Narrative, 28.2, 2020, pp. 236-249)
Porciani, Elena: ‘Da Napoli al cliché. Note sull’Amica geniale di Elena Ferrante’ (Allegoria, 73, 2016, pp. 174-178) available online at https://www.allegoriaonline.it/PDF/929.pdf
Porcelli, Stefania: Narrating Intensity: History and Emotions in Elsa Morante, Goliarda Sapienza and Elena Ferrante. PhD dissertation (City University of New York, 2020) available online at https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3825/
Reyes Ferrer, Maria: ‘La narrativa de Elena Ferrante: El desequilibrio de Olga, una Medea moderna’ (Raudem. Revista De Estudios De Las Mujeres, 3, 2015, pp. 268–282)
—: ‘La funzione dello specchio nel romanzo I giorni dell’abbandono di Elena Ferrante’ (Quadernos de Filologia Italiana, 23, 2016, pp. 221-236)
—: ‘Las relaciones materno-filiales en la obra de Elena Ferrante’ (Asparkía, 31, 2017, pp. 47–63)
Ricciardi, Alessia: ‘Can the Subaltern Speak in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels?’ (Estetica: studi e ricerche, 7.2, 2017, pp. 293-312)
—: Finding Ferrante: Authorship and the Politics of World Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021)
Ricciotti, Adele: ‘Un confronto tra Elena Ferrante e Anna Maria Ortese: la città di Napoli, la fuga, l’identità’ (Zibaldone. Estudios italianos, 4.2, July 2016, pp. 111-122)
Riccobono, Rossella: ‘Fantasising the Self, Fantasising the Other: Memory and Revisions in Mario Martone’s L’amore molesto’ (Italica, 87.3, 2010, pp. 441-461)
Risi, Alessia: ‘Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels: Retelling History through Gendered Fiction’ (Journal of Romance Studies, 18.3, January 2018, pp. 317-340)
Sambuco, Patrizia: ‘Elena Ferrante’s L’amore molesto: The Renegotiation of the Mother’s Body’ in Corporeal Bonds: The Daughter-Mother Relationship in Twentieth-Century Italian Women’s Writing (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012, pp. 129-151)
—: ‘Construction and Self-Construction in Elena Ferrante’s Gendered Space’ in Beyond the Piazza: Public and Private Spaces in Modern Italian Culture ed. by Simona Storchi (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2013, pp. 115-127)
Santovetti, Olivia: ‘Lettura, scrittura e autoriflessione nel ciclo de L’amica geniale di Elena Ferrante’ (Allegoria, 73, 2016, pp. 179-192) available online at https://www.allegoriaonline.it/PDF/930.pdf
—: ‘Melodrama or Metafiction? Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels’ (The Modern Language Review, 113.3, 2018, pp. 527-545)
—: ‘“Io non ci sto”: Elena Ferrante, the Theme of Erasure, and the Smarginatura as Poetics of Resistance’ in Resistance in Italian Culture from Dante to the 21st Century ed. by Ambra Moroncini, Darrow Schecter, and Fabio Vighi (Florence: Franco Cesati, 2019, pp. 281-294)
—: ‘Künstlerroman of “Late Modernity”: Karl Ove Knausgård’s My Struggle and Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet’ (MLN. Italian Issue: Elena Ferrante in a Global Context ed. by Tiziana de Rogatis, Stiliana Milkova, and Katrin Wehling-Giorgi, 136.1, 2021, pp. 186-208)
Savoy, Jacques: ‘Elena Ferrante: A Case Study in Authorship Attribution’ in Machine Learning Methods for Stylometry: Authorship Attribution and Author Profiling (New York: Springer, 2020, pp. 191-210)
Scarinci, Viviana: Elena Ferrante (Milan: Doppiozero, 2015) [ebook]
—: Neapolitanische Puppen. Ein Essay über die Welt von Elena Ferrante, trans. by Ingrid Ickler (Cologne: Launenweber, 2018)
—: Il libro di tutti e di nessuno: Elena Ferrante, un ritratto delle italiane del XX secolo (Guidonia, Rome: Iacobellieditore, 2020)
Sciacovelli, Antonio: ‘Restare o partire? Sulle rappresentazioni non stereotipate di Napoli’ (Italianistica Debreceniensis, 25, 2020, pp. 36-53)
Schwartz, Cecilia: ‘Ferrante Feud: The Italian Reception of the Neapolitan Novels before and after their International Success’ (The Italianist, 40.1, 2020, pp. 122-142) available online at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02614340.2020.1738122
Schwartz, Selby: ‘Very Queer Friends: Alba De Céspedes’ Dalla parte di lei and Elena Ferrante’s La vita bugiarda degli adulti’ (Altrelettere, February 2020, pp. 1-23) available online at https://www.altrelettere.uzh.ch/article/view/al_uzh-45
Sciubba, Jessica: ‘Blurring Bodily Boundaries: On the rione’s Abjective Agency in Ferrante’s Cycle of L’amica geniale’ (Annali d’Italianistica: Urban Space and the Body ed. by Silvia Ross and Giulio Giovannoni, 37, 2019, pp. 503-525)
Segnini, Elisa: ‘Local Flavour vs Global Readerships: The Elena Ferrante Project and Translatability’ (The Italianist, 37.1, 2017, pp. 100-118)
—: ‘Andrea Camilleri’s Montalbano and Elena Ferrante’s L’amica geniale: The Afterlife of Two “Glocal” Series’ (The Translator, 2018, pp. 1-17): doi: 10.1080/13556509.2018.1502607
Shpall, Sam: ‘Female Freedom and The Neapolitan Novels (Part 1)’ (Hypatia, 36.4, 2021, pp. 676-701)
—: Female Freedom and The Neapolitan Novels (Part 2)’ (Hypatia, 37.1, 2022, pp. 111-135)
Small, Pauline: ‘Mario Martone’s L’amore molesto: Desperately Seeking Delia’ (The Italianist, 19.1, 1999, pp. 299-317)
Sotgiu, Elisa: ‘Elena Ferrante e il femminismo della differenza. Una lettura dell’Amica geniale’ (Allegoria, 76, 2017, pp. 58-76) available online at https://www.allegoriaonline.it/PDF/1021.pdf
—: ‘Woes of the True Global Novelist: Elena Ferrante and Roberto Bolaño in the International Literary Field’ (Journal of World Literature, 7.2, 2022, pp. 274–297)
Taheri, Yasaman: ‘Historical Metafiction: Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels as a Postmodern Rethinking of History’ (Anafora, 10.1, 2023, pp. 127–146)
Tay, Rachel: ‘Elusions and Disillusions’ (Reading in Translation, 31 August 2020) available online at https://readingintranslation.com/2020/08/31/elusions-and-disillusions/
Taylor, Fiona: ‘“Master of the Unsayable”: Elena Ferrante’s Representation of the Complexities of Female Friendship as a Form of “Truth-Telling”’ (English Academy Review, 40.2, 2023, pp. 97–108)
Todesco, Serena: ‘Città come corpo, madre, mondo: soggettività e abiezione dello spazio urbano al femminile in Elena Ferrante e Anna Maria Ortese’ in Studi sull’immaginario italiano. Una prospettiva interdisciplinare ed. by Eliana Moscarda Mirković (Novate Milanese (MI): Prospero Editore, 2019, pp. 75-87)
—: ‘Maternal Troubling Bodies in Slavenka Drakulić and Elena Ferrante’ (MLN. Italian Issue: Elena Ferrante in a Global Context ed. by Tiziana de Rogatis, Stiliana Milkova, and Katrin Wehling-Giorgi, 136.1, 2021, pp. 164-185)
Tortorici, Dayna: 'Those Like Us: on Elena Ferrante’ (n+1: Conviction, 22, Spring 2015) available online at https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-22/reviews/those-like-us/
Trifuoggi, Mario and Francesco Sielo: ‘My Brilliant City: Naples, Urban Poverty and the ‘Ethnographic Imagination’ of Elena Ferrante’ (Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 28.3, 2023, pp. 362–379)
Turchetta, Gianni: ‘Dal rione al mainstream. L’amica geniale di Elena Ferrante’ in Tirature ’16. Un mondo da tradurre ed. by Vittorio Spinazzola (Milan: Mondadori, 2016, pp. 104-111)
Tuzzi, Arjuna and Michele A. Cortellazzo: ‘What Is Elena Ferrante? A Comparative Analysis of a Secretive Bestselling Italian Writer’ (Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 33.3, September 2018, pp. 685-702)
— [eds]: Drawing Elena Ferrante’s Profile. Workshop Proceedings, Padova, 7 September 2017 (Padua: Padua UP, 2018)
Van de Ven, Inge: Big Books in the Times of Big Data (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2019)
Van Ness, Emma: ‘Dixit Mater: The Significance of the Maternal Voice in Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels’ in The Works of Elena Ferrante. Reconfiguring the Margins ed. by Grace Russo Bullaro and Stephanie Love (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 293-312)
Varricchio, Isabella: Lacrime di frantumaglia: Verità letteraria nell'opera di Elena Ferrante, Masters dissertation (Stockholm University, 2018) available online at https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1252962&dswid=7434
Villarini, Andrea: ‘Riflessioni sociolinguistiche a margine de L’amica geniale di Elena Ferrante’ (Allegoria, 73, 2016, pp. 193-203) available online at https://www.allegoriaonline.it/PDF/931.pdf
Walker, Rebecca: ‘Picking Up the Pieces: Elena Ferrante’s Global Poetics of Fracture’ (MLN. Italian Issue: Elena Ferrante in a Global Context ed. by Tiziana de Rogatis, Stiliana Milkova, and Katrin Wehling-Giorgi, 136.1, 2021, pp. 75-95)
—: ‘Mean Girls and Melancholics: Insidious Trauma in The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante and Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney’ in Trauma Narratives in Italian and Transnational Women’s Writing ed. by Tiziana de Rogatis and Katrin Wehling-Giorgi (Rome: Sapienza University Press, 2022, pp. 335–358)
—: The Sense of Fracture in Goliarda Sapienza and Elena Ferrante: Fragile Selves, Fragile Others (Cambridge: Legenda, forthcoming autumn 2024)
Wehling-Giorgi, Katrin: ‘Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels: Writing Liminality’ (Allegoria, 73, 2016, pp. 204-210) available online at https://www.allegoriaonline.it/PDF/932.pdf
—: ‘“Ero separata da me”: Memory, Selfhood, and Mother-Tongue in Goliarda Sapienza and Elena Ferrante’ in Goliarda Sapienza in Context: Intertextual Relationships with Italian and European Culture ed. by Alberica Bazzoni, Emma Bond, and Katrin Wehling-Giorgi (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2016, pp. 215-230)
—: ‘Playing with the Maternal Body: Violence, Mutilation, and the Emergence of the Female Subject in Ferrante’s Novels’ (California Italian Studies, 7.1, 2017, pp. 1-15) available online at https://escholarship.org/content/qt02d156h0/qt02d156h0.pdf
—: ‘Violence, Language and the Maternal Body: Negotiating Resistance in Goliarda Sapienza’s and Elena Ferrante’s Works’ in Women and the Public Sphere in Modern and Contemporary Italy: Essays for Sharon Wood ed. by Simona Storchi, Marina Spunta, and Maria Morelli (Leicester: Troubador, 2017, pp. 63-75)
—: ‘Rethinking Constructs of Maternity in the Novels of Elena Ferrante and Alice Sebold’ (Women: A Cultural Review, 30.1, 2019, pp. 66-83)
—: ‘Unclaimed Stories: Narrating Sexual Violence and the Traumatized Self in Elena Ferrante and Alice Sebold’s Writings’ (MLN. Italian Issue: Elena Ferrante in a Global Context ed. by Tiziana de Rogatis, Stiliana Milkova, and Katrin Wehling-Giorgi, 136.1, 2021, pp. 118-142)
—: ‘Unspeakable Things Spoken: Transgenerational Trauma, Fractured Bodies and Visual Tropes in Toni Morrison, Elsa Morante and Elena Ferrante’s Works’ (Romance Studies. Special Issue: Comparative Approaches to Elena Ferrante: Traumas, Bodies, Languages ed. by Katrin Wehling-Giorgi and Stiliana Milkova Rousseva, 41.4, 2023, pp. 248-266)
Wehling-Giorgi, Katrin and Stiliana Milkova Rousseva: ‘Comparative Approaches to Elena Ferrante: Traumas, Bodies, Languages’ (Romance Studies. Special Issue: Comparative Approaches to Elena Ferrante: Traumas, Bodies, Languages ed. by Katrin Wehling-Giorgi and Stiliana Milkova Rousseva, 41.4, 2023, pp. 241-247)
Winterson, Jeanette: ‘The Malice and Sexism Behind the “Unmasking” of Elena Ferrante’ (The Guardian, 7 October 2016) available online at https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/07/unmasking-elena-ferrante
Wood, James: ‘Women on the Verge: The Fiction of Elena Ferrante’ (The New Yorker, 14 January 2013) available online at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/01/21/women-on-the-verge
Zagaglia, Elena: ‘Tutta la letteratura è infanzia. Su Elena Ferrante’ (Encyclopaideia, 23.53, 2019, pp. 106-113) available online at https://encp.unibo.it/article/view/9358
Zarour Zarzar, Victor Xavier: ‘Bumping into the Novelistic Scaffolding: Narrative Structure in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels’ (Contemporary Women’s Writing, 13.2, 2019, pp. 186-202)
—: ‘The Grammar of Abandonment in I giorni dell’abbandono’ (MLN, 135.1, 2020, pp. 327-344)
—: ‘Bad Blood: On Culpability and a Metabolic Approach to Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend’ (Journal of Narrative Theory, 50.2, 2020, pp. 263-285)
—: ‘Lila Unbound: Critical Negativity and Entropy in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels’ (California Italian Studies, 10.2, 2020, pp. 1-15)
—: ‘An Alternative Geometry: L’amica geniale and the Bildungsroman’ (The Modern Language Review, 116.3, 2021, pp. 445-461)
Zevenbergen, Frianne C.: Il tema dell’amicizia femminile in L’amica geniale di Elena Ferrante, Masters dissertation (Leiden University, 2015) available online at https://studenttheses.universiteitleiden.nl/access/item%3A2609841/view
Interviews/in the Media
Interviews
Carotenuto, Angelo: ‘La scrittrice geniale. Amiche mie, siete libere’. Interview with Elena Ferrante (il Venerdì di Repubblica, 1595, 12 ottobre 2018, pp. 16-22)
Elle: ‘The Elena Ferrante Interview’, trans. by Ann Goldstein (Elle, 29 August 2020) available online at https://www.elle.com/culture/books/a33834141/elena-ferrante-interview-the-lying-life-of-adults/
Emre, Merve: ‘We Tell a Story and Try to Do Our Best’. Interview with Elena Ferrante (Elena Ferrante, 7 November 2018) available online at http://elenaferrante.com/category/interview/
Fiori, Simonetta: ‘Elena Ferrante’s Interview: “I have to lie to tell the truth”’ (la Repubblica: Robinson, 9 December 2019) available online at https://www.repubblica.it/robinson/2019/12/02/news/_i_have_to_lie_to_tell_the_truth_-242458739/
Jacob, Didier: ‘In a Rare Interview, Elena Ferrante Describes the Writing Process Behind the Neapolitan Novels’ (Los Angeles Times, 17 May 2018) available online at https://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-elena-ferrante-interview-20180517-htmlstory.html
Radio, Television, Films, Theatre, Documentaries
L’amore molesto, dir. by Mario Martone (Lucky Red, 1995) [film]
I giorni dell’abbandono, dir. by Roberto Faenza (Jean Vigo Italia, 2005) [film]
Elena Ferrante ‒ The Neapolitan Novels, dir. by Celia de Wolff (BBC Radio 4 Extra, 14-25 September 2020) [radio play]
Ferrante Fever, dir. by Giacomo Durzi (Malìa; Rai Cinema, 2017) [documentary]
My Brilliant Friend, dir. by Melly Still (Rose Theatre, Kingston-upon-Thames, 25 February-2 April 2017; National Theatre, London, 12 November 2019-22 February 2020) [play]
My Brilliant Friend, dir. by Saverio Costanzo (HBO, 2018-2020) [TV series]
Storia di un’amicizia, dir. by Luigi De Angelis (Co-production: Ravenna Festival, Fondazione Campania dei Festival/Napoli Teatro Festival Italia, Fanny & Alexander, 22 June 2018-15 February 2021) [play]
The Lying Life of Adults, read by Juliet Aubrey (BBC Radio 4, 31 August-11 September 2020) [audio book]
The Lost Daughter, dir. by Maggie Gyllenhaal (Endeavor Content, 2021) [film]
Umberto Eco Lectures, 2021: La scrittura smarginata (Three lectures by Elena Ferrante with Manuela Mandracchia in the role of the author):
1. 'La pena e la penna' available online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9IgkC5m9mA
2. 'Acquamarina' available online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIhKJfMSauk
3. 'Storie, io' available online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h63tMxGMUQw