Elena Ferrante: Abandoning the Author

Esplicito

Welcome to the fourth episode of ‘Cultural Obsessions,’ a series organized for the Meltemi podcast, the official podcast for La Piccioletta Barca magazine.

In this episode, Eleonora speaks with Micaela Brinsley on one of her many Cultural Obsessions: the persona and work of Elena Ferrante.

A pseudonymous celebrity, Ferrante has achieved a literary fame unusual for writers in the twenty-first century. Best known for her tetralogy together called The Neapolitan Novels, she has become well-known for writing about women in the spaces in-between, in the negotiation of their private and public selves. In forensic detail, Ferrante deconstructs friendships, the feelings of ambivalence many women have for the trappings of femininity, and the explosions that emerge from people who’ve silenced themselves in order to survive. By removing her tr ...