Honors Project--Smith College, Northampton, Mass., 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 49-53).

This essay is a study of a novel from a gender perspective with the aim of highlighting how society shapes women and men into different roles. The novel takes place in Italy between 1940 and 1960 and in the essay  I also study whether the author´s description of society is in accordance with historical reality. To narrow the study down I have chosen to focus on education, family and women’s roles in society. In the first part of the essay I have studied statistics, documentaries and other sources, which I compared with the content of the novel. This confirms my hypothesis that Elena Ferrante’s story is an accurate portrait of the society of that time. The second part of the essay is studying L’amica geniale from a gender perspective. I have used a feminist approach basing it on Yvonne Hirdman’s theories of the gender system. The result of the study reveals that girls and boys are treated differently from a very young age and are given different roles and different spaces in society. Arguments for the biological difference between women and men are constantly present in the novel. For the two main characters, the possibility to study changes their lives in different ways and has long-term consequences. The text and its analysis show how only when people refuse the given roles and rebel against them, they are able to change them.

O presente trabalho tem como objetivo principal analisar a construção das personagens femininas na tetralogia napolitana Lamica geniale, de Elena Ferrante. Para tanto, situamos a obra dentro da tradição do Bildungsroman e da tradição realista, para que seja possível compreender a herança de Ferrante e seus modelos de criação. Utilizamos, principalmente, os estudos de Franco Moretti, que percorrem as origens e as contradições deste subgênero romanesco, e como a voz feminina da heroína de Ferrante está ligada à tradição, ao mesmo tempo em que demonstra as dificuldades da peregrinação e do destino femininos dentro do contexto italiano. A construção feminina se concentra principalmente na protagonista e narradora da obra, Elena Greco, e particularidades de seu ethos e narrativa, tanto no plano da expressão quanto no plano do conteúdo. Para compreender a construção de Lenù, utilizamos a noção de sujeito reflexivo e suas relações com outros sujeitos. Ainda, levamos em consideração a relação com a maternidade como ponto incômodo na obra, bem como a dificuldade das relações femininas construídas na tetralogia. / This work aims to analyze the female characters construction in the Neapolitan Novels Lamica genial, by Elena Ferrante. For that purpose, we locate the books inside the Bildungsromans tradition and the realist tradition to enable the understanding of Ferrantes heritage and creative models. We use, mainly, the studies of Franco Moretti, which describes the origins and the contradictions of this novels subgenre; how the female voice of Ferrantes heroine is connected to the tradition; and, simultaneously, by what means it demonstrates the difficulties of the female peregrination and destiny inside the Italian context. The female construction is essentially concentrated in the protagonist and narrator Elena Greco, the particularities of her ethos and narrative, either in the expression or in the content narrative level. To understand Lenùs construction, we use the notion of reflexive subject and their relations with other subjects. Furthermore, we take into account the relation established with maternity as a troubling point in the books, as well as the difficulties between female relationships that are constructed in the novels.

Este estudo busca oferecer uma leitura da obra Lamica geniale (A amiga genial, 2011- 2014), de Elena Ferrante, a partir da ambivalência que se destaca em sua composição, quer seja do ponto de vista formal, quer seja do ponto de vista temático. Para isso, procura seguir os preceitos que orientam a relação entre crítica literária e psicanálise. / This study seeks to offer an interpretation of Elena Ferrantes Lamica geniale (My brilliant friend, 2011-2014), starting from the idea of ambivalence that arises in its composition from both a formal and a thematic point of view. To do so, this work aims to follow the precepts that guide the relationship between literary criticism and psychoanalysis.

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This essay focuses on the cultural aspects of translation, mainly on the cultural-specific elements known as realia, when translating from Italian to Swedish. As the realia might be unknown to the reader of the target text and as they often have no exact correspondence in the target language, they often pose a challenge for the translator. The essay examines which strategies the translator has used to translate cultural-specific elements and the question is raised whether the translation, regarding the cultural aspects, is orientated towards the source culture (adequacy-orientated) or towards the target culture (acceptability-orientated). Three of the Neapolitan Novels written by pseudonymous Elena Ferrante, Storia del nuovo cognome (2012), Storia di chi fugge e di chi resta (2013) and Storia della bambina perduta (2014), serve as source text of the analysis. The Neapolitan setting of the novels make them specifically suitable for a study of cultural-specific elements. The study is qualitative and complemented with a quantitative part. It is based on Osimo’s (2011) strategies for the translation of realia. The analysis reveals that cultural-specific elements of the source text tend to be replaced with more generic and international expressions. Prioritizing the narrative over cultural-specific elements the translation shows a tendency towards acceptability.

This master thesis presents a study of the authorship of the Italian writer Elena Ferrante, focusing on hermain concepts “la frantumaglia” and “la smarginatura” in relation to the question of literary truth. Thepurpose is to examine the fascinating interaction between meta reflection and narration through anintratextual reading of her poetics elaborated in La frantumaglia (2013, 2016) and all novels publishedso far. With references to the theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, la frantumaglia and lasmarginatura are interpreted as the unconscious and different mental disorders that characterize the crisisof the female protagonists. The analysis examines literary truth on three literary levels: the verbal,considering the Neapolitan dialect related to the city of Naples as a representation of both maternalorigin and patriarchal oppression, the stylistic, viewing la smarginatura as literary style, and finally, thesymbolic, connected to what Ferrante calls the “symbolic sphere of the authentic”. Furthermore, anintellectual approach to truth is discussed as a contraposition to the others. In applying the methodologyof Michael Riffaterre, the analysis of the stylistic and symbolic truth dimensions shows how theiridiosyncratic traits are extended and transformed throughout the Ferrantian work. The thesis alsosuggests a different interpretation of the intimate relationship between mother and daughter, one of theauthorship’s central themes. Unlike previous studies with a psychoanalytical approach that affirms theexistence of a pre-oedipal phase free from patriarchal intrusion, this analysis demonstrates how Ferranterepeatedly reveals this idea as an infantile fantasy. Instead, the thesis argues that the only real synthesisis found at the level of writing itself, in the merging of the perspectives of the two protagonists in thecycle of L’amica geniale (The Neapolitan novels). This synthesis is further conceived as the authenticidentity of the anonymous author herself.