- Department of Italian
Trinity College Dublin
Dublin 2
Ireland
Enrica Maria Ferrara
Trinity College Dublin, Italian, Faculty Member
- Italian, Italian Studies, Italian Literature, Italian Cinema, 20th Century Italian Literature, Italian Cultural Studies, and 17 moreComparative Literature, Theatre Studies, Italo Calvino, Cesare Pavese, Elio Vittorini, Italian Resistance Literature, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Neorealism, Elena Ferrante, Italian Translation of La Celestina, La Celestina, La Celestina and celestinesque sequels, Celestina, Reception and legacy of Celestina, Agential Realism, Performativity, and N. Katherine Haylesedit
A debut novel set in Southern Italy in the 1980s. It tells the story of a family suddenly involved in the political intrigues and violent terrorist attacks which divided Italy during the so-called "Years of Lead", in the aftermath of Aldo... more
A debut novel set in Southern Italy in the 1980s. It tells the story of a family suddenly involved in the political intrigues and violent terrorist attacks which divided Italy during the so-called "Years of Lead", in the aftermath of Aldo Moro's murder. The story is narrated by the candid voice of Gina Carafa, a ten-year-old girl, who seeks to discover the reasons behind her father's sudden disappearance in the summer of 1980. Mario Carafa, a Christian Democrat politician and a bank manager, becomes a fugitive. He will reappear on the scene after seven years, when Gina meets him over the course of one day, in November 1987. The two timelines of 1980 and 1987 alternate with a dynamic pace and vivid descriptions of terrifying events witnessed by Gina, her sister Betta and her mother Sofia. A coming-of-age novel and a political thriller, this novel is inspired by true events.
The novel is written in Italian. A large sample and a detailed synopsis are available in English. Translation rights are available for all languages.
The novel is written in Italian. A large sample and a detailed synopsis are available in English. Translation rights are available for all languages.
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As humans re-negotiate their boundaries with the nonhuman world of animals, inanimate entities and technological artefacts, new identities are formed and a new epistemological and ethical approach to reality is needed. Through twelve... more
As humans re-negotiate their boundaries with the nonhuman world of animals, inanimate
entities and technological artefacts, new identities are formed and a new epistemological and ethical approach to reality is needed. Through twelve thought-provoking, scholarly essays, this volume analyzes works by a range of modern and contemporary Italian authors, from Giacomo Leopardi to Elena Ferrante, who have captured the shift from anthropocentrism and postmodernism to posthumanism. Indeed, this is the first academic volume investigating narrative configurations of posthuman identity in Italian literature and film.
entities and technological artefacts, new identities are formed and a new epistemological and ethical approach to reality is needed. Through twelve thought-provoking, scholarly essays, this volume analyzes works by a range of modern and contemporary Italian authors, from Giacomo Leopardi to Elena Ferrante, who have captured the shift from anthropocentrism and postmodernism to posthumanism. Indeed, this is the first academic volume investigating narrative configurations of posthuman identity in Italian literature and film.
Research Interests: Posthumanism, Identity (Culture), Digital Culture, Italian Literature, Postmodernism, and 15 moreItalian Cinema, Giacomo Leopardi, Luigi Pirandello, Michelangelo Antonioni, Zombie Films, Gianni Celati, Contemporary Italian Poetry, Anthropocene, Human-Nonhuman relations, Luciano Bianciardi, Elena Ferrante, Tiziano Scarpa, Laura Pugno, Neomaterialism, and Aldo Nove
This volume deals with natural disasters in late medieval and early modern central and southern Italy. Contributions look at a range of catastrophic events such as eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, floods, earthquakes, and outbreaks of plague... more
This volume deals with natural disasters in late medieval and early modern central and southern Italy. Contributions look at a range of catastrophic events such as eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, floods, earthquakes, and outbreaks of plague and epidemics. A major aim of this volume is to investigate the relationship between catastrophic events and different communication strategies that embraced politics, religion, propaganda, dissent, scholarship as well as collective responses from the lower segments of society. The contributors to this volume share a multidisciplinary approach to the study of natural disasters which draws on disciplines such as cultural and social history, anthropology, literary theory, and linguistics. Together with analyzing the prolific production of propagandistic material and literary sources issued in periods of acute crisis, the documentation on disasters studied in this volume also includes laws and emergency regulations, petitions and pleas to the authorities, scientific and medical treatises, manuscript and printed newsletters as well as diplomatic dispatches and correspondence.
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Using textual examples linked to one major literary tradition, the present volume examines relationships between the different but related media of theatre and narrative literature. For many centuries stories were mostly consumed by... more
Using textual examples linked to one major literary tradition, the present volume examines relationships between the different but related media of theatre and narrative literature. For many centuries stories were mostly consumed by listening to someone reciting or reading them aloud: they were essentially performances rather than the silent reading experiences that have become the default in our literate societies. This books reminds us that the written word is also the spoken word and that relations between page and stage, literature and performance, constitute a dynamic two-way street. Drawing on multiple theoretical and methodological approaches, the volume includes essays on Boccaccio, Manzoni, Pirandello, Campanile, De Filippo, Fo, Gadda, Vittorini, Consolo, Sciascia, Testori and Racco.
Research Interests: Theatre Studies, Italian Studies, Performance Studies, Bakhtin, Italian Literature, and 12 moreBertolt Brecht, Luigi Pirandello, Boccaccio, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Leonardo Sciascia, Alessandro Manzoni, Vincenzo Consolo, Elio Vittorini, Giovanni Testori, Achille Campanile, and Enrica Maria Ferrara
Questo libro racconta il realismo della letteratura novecentesca da un’ottica straniata e inedita, ed esplora l’ipotesi che alcuni scrittori italiani – Vittorini, Pasolini e Calvino – abbiano guardato alle tecniche espressive del... more
Questo libro racconta il realismo della letteratura novecentesca da un’ottica straniata e inedita, ed esplora l’ipotesi che alcuni scrittori italiani – Vittorini, Pasolini e Calvino – abbiano guardato alle tecniche espressive del linguaggio teatrale come strumento privilegiato per l’elaborazione narrativa di un proprio personale “realismo teatrale”. L’individuale approdo alla cultura teatrale da parte dei narratori presi in considerazione è inquadrato nell’ambito di una più ampia tendenza all’interdisciplinarietà e alla rottura delle barriere di genere che riguarda tutta la cultura novecentesca, con riferimenti puntuali alle teorie di Szondi, Brecht, Lukács, Gramsci, Contini e Bachtin. L’autrice completa la sua indagine teorica con un’analisi critica di capolavori narrativi del Novecento come Il barone rampante e Conversazione in Sicilia.
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Questo libro affronta per la prima volta in maniera complessiva il discorso sull’attività teatrale di Italo Calvino, dagli anni della produzione giovanile fino alla tormentata riscrittura di Un re in ascolto che accompagnerà l’autore fino... more
Questo libro affronta per la prima volta in maniera complessiva il discorso sull’attività teatrale di Italo Calvino, dagli anni della produzione giovanile fino alla tormentata riscrittura di Un re in ascolto che accompagnerà l’autore fino alla morte nel 1985.
La ricostruzione filologico-indiziaria dello stile e dei temi utilizzati nelle opere teatrali giovanili perdute e l’analisi puntuale di un corpus di recensioni teatrali calviniane mai pubblicate in volume fino ad ora costituiscono il fulcro di questo saggio che, oltre a gettare nuova luce su uno dei tanti ‘tavoli di lavoro’ dello scrittore sanremese, mira a reimpostare il discorso critico sulla militanza politica di Calvino e sulle teorie estetiche da lui promosse nel corso degli anni Cinquanta.
Una delle ipotesi avanzate da Ferrara per spiegare l’inquietante avvicendarsi di ricerca e rimozione nella scrittura teatrale di Calvino è che l'identità di drammaturgo svolga un ruolo fondamentale nell’impegno calviniano ad auto-rappresentarsi e a fabbricarsi una veste autoriale sempre diversa e cangiante.
La ricostruzione filologico-indiziaria dello stile e dei temi utilizzati nelle opere teatrali giovanili perdute e l’analisi puntuale di un corpus di recensioni teatrali calviniane mai pubblicate in volume fino ad ora costituiscono il fulcro di questo saggio che, oltre a gettare nuova luce su uno dei tanti ‘tavoli di lavoro’ dello scrittore sanremese, mira a reimpostare il discorso critico sulla militanza politica di Calvino e sulle teorie estetiche da lui promosse nel corso degli anni Cinquanta.
Una delle ipotesi avanzate da Ferrara per spiegare l’inquietante avvicendarsi di ricerca e rimozione nella scrittura teatrale di Calvino è che l'identità di drammaturgo svolga un ruolo fondamentale nell’impegno calviniano ad auto-rappresentarsi e a fabbricarsi una veste autoriale sempre diversa e cangiante.
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Il libro traccia un itinerario nuovo nell'immaginario calviniano che ci sospinge verso un paesaggio simbolico altro: quello della cultura e della letteratura anglosassoni dal 700 al 900. Pionieri, esploratori di nuovi mondi, sono i... more
Il libro traccia un itinerario nuovo nell'immaginario calviniano che ci sospinge verso un paesaggio simbolico altro: quello della cultura e della letteratura anglosassoni dal 700 al 900. Pionieri, esploratori di nuovi mondi, sono i protagonisti e gli autori delle storie che alimentano la creatività di questo Calvino "inedito" e che confluiscono come modelli nell'opera allegorico-fantastica Il barone rampante. Con una serie di percorsi possibili nella rete di simboli che collegano l'opera di Calvino a quella di Defoe, Sterne, Conrad, Stevenson, questo saggio racconta la storia dell'anglofilia calviniana.
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This article examines how the Decameron’s frame story and paratext are re-codified in Pasolini’s 1971 cinematic masterpiece. My ultimate aim is to analyse how Pasolini’s idea of authorship interacts with that of his medieval predecessor... more
This article examines how the Decameron’s frame story and paratext are re-codified in Pasolini’s 1971 cinematic masterpiece. My ultimate aim is to analyse how Pasolini’s idea of authorship interacts with that of his medieval predecessor to express the self-referential subjectivity of the director-author-actor Pasolini embedded in the movie. Poised between the image of the untrustworthy story-teller Ciappelletto, whose “speech-act” generates the perlocutionary effect of his sanctification, and the image of the painter-director Giotto, whose all-encompassing gaze symbolizes the superiority of cinema as language of reality over literary realism, Pasolini’s concept of authorship is transgressive and performative. By lending his acting body to the character-author of Giotto, Pasolini emphasizes the issue of gender’s performativity and creates a specific horizon of expectations around the presence of a gay author-director implying the presence of a gay audience. This paper focuses on this concept and emphasizes the dynamic between the logic of visibility and the power of the “unseen” through which Pasolini addresses the complex issue of the lettrici, implied readers and empirical story-tellers of Boccaccio’s Decameron who appear to be absent from the movie
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Intertextuality and Intratextuality are key to understanding Domenico Starnone’s poetics. All his novels are like paintings that break out of the frame to expand into other paintings, resuming a conversation with the reader that had been... more
Intertextuality and Intratextuality are key to understanding Domenico Starnone’s poetics. All his novels are like paintings that break out of the frame to expand into other paintings, resuming a conversation with the reader that had been temporarily put on hold.
This essay analyses "Via Gemito" (2000) and its sequel "Labilità" (2006), arguing that "Via Gemito" is the Ur- text of Starnone's narrative, the archetypical novel containing all others.
This essay analyses "Via Gemito" (2000) and its sequel "Labilità" (2006), arguing that "Via Gemito" is the Ur- text of Starnone's narrative, the archetypical novel containing all others.
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This article explores aspects of Pier Paolo Pasolini's youthful theatrical production, and presents the hypothesis of a performative use of The Friulian language as language of the "closet". L'articolo esplora aspetti della produzione... more
This article explores aspects of Pier Paolo Pasolini's youthful theatrical production, and presents the hypothesis of a performative use of The Friulian language as language of the "closet".
L'articolo esplora aspetti della produzione teatrale giovanile di Pier Paolo Pasolini. Presenta l'ipotesi dell'uso performativo della lingua friulana come lingua del "closet".
L'articolo esplora aspetti della produzione teatrale giovanile di Pier Paolo Pasolini. Presenta l'ipotesi dell'uso performativo della lingua friulana come lingua del "closet".
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Rather than antagonizing the male figure as the only available path to construct a liberated female subject, Natalia Ginzburg takes a different approach altogether, one that could be seen as an example of intersectional feminism "avant la... more
Rather than antagonizing the male figure as the only available path to construct a liberated female subject, Natalia Ginzburg takes a different approach altogether, one that could be seen as an example of intersectional feminism "avant la lettre", as she explores the perilous grounds of 1950s queer identity. She does that for the first time in the short story Valentino (written in 1951 and published in 1957) where Ginzburg illustrates her concept of a gender-fluid identity going against the grain of the strictly heteronormative mindset that dominated society in post-war Italy.
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In this introductory chapter, Ferrara reconstructs the key moments that anticipated and facilitated the development of posthumanist thought in Italian culture, from Giacomo Leopardi in the nineteenth century to the official posthuman turn... more
In this introductory chapter, Ferrara reconstructs the key moments that anticipated and facilitated the development of posthumanist thought in Italian culture, from Giacomo Leopardi in the nineteenth century to the official posthuman turn of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Through this useful historical overview, Ferrara illustrates her notion of posthuman identity as relational and interconnected. In doing so, she provides a methodological overview of the philosophical sources upon which her argument is grounded, from Cavarero to Butler, from Braidotti to Marchesini, from Iovino to Barad, and so on. A detailed summary of the volume’s contents is included at the end of this chapter.
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"Evelina e le fate" (Evelina and the Fairies), shortlisted for the prestigious Calvino prize in 2013 and awarded the John Fante literary prize in the same year, was the debut novel of Simona Baldelli, a talented Italian writer from... more
"Evelina e le fate" (Evelina and the Fairies), shortlisted for the prestigious Calvino prize in 2013 and awarded the John Fante literary prize in the same year, was the debut novel of Simona Baldelli, a talented Italian writer from Pesaro, in the Marche region. After this promising beginning, Baldelli has published five critically-acclaimed novels. Baldelli’s story brings to the foreground, through the character of Evelina, the intersecting vulnerabilities of children, peasants, and women: three neglected viewpoints allowing to cast a new light onto the partisan war, the alliance between Italians and Germans, and the forgotten story of the persecuted Italian Jews.
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This chapter illustrates how binarism is overcome through the active process of “becoming posthuman” in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels. Drawing on Barad’s notion of the world of phenomena as “intra-acting agency,” Ferrara describes... more
This chapter illustrates how binarism is overcome through the active process of “becoming posthuman” in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels. Drawing on Barad’s notion of the world of phenomena as “intra-acting agency,” Ferrara describes the emergence of the interconnected identity of the characters of Elena and Lina as they confront their fear of merging with the environmental and technological “other” precisely by losing their singularity. The act of writing in Ferrante becomes the means by which the posthuman subject may successfully become “singular plural” (Nancy) and bridge the gap with the world of phenomena. Interconnected identity helps illustrating Ferrante’s struggle with an embodied notion of singular authorship as opposed to a dispersed, collaborative, “polyphonic” idea of cultural production rooted in digital culture.
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This chapter focuses on the novel Bambini di ferro (Iron Children, 2016) by multi-awarded writer Viola Di Grado (1987) whose work is little investigated by scholars. Set in Nepal between the sixth and the fifth centuries B. C. and in a... more
This chapter focuses on the novel Bambini di ferro (Iron Children, 2016) by multi-awarded writer Viola Di Grado (1987) whose work is little investigated by scholars. Set in Nepal between the sixth and the fifth centuries B. C. and in a futuristic Japan, Iron Children provides a stimulating insight into a posthuman world where maternity has been reduced to an android process, as “loving gestures are no longer spontaneous, yet need to be artificially recreated” (Di Grado2016b). By adopting a critical framework inspired by Kristeva’s abjection theory and Braidotti’s thoughts on maternity, monstrosity and machines, this chapter aims at reading Iron Children’s representation of an android maternity able to challenge the biological one.
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Chapter from Enrica Maria Ferrara (ed.), "Posthumanism in Italian Literature and Film. Boundaries and Identity", Springer, 2020
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Chapter from Enrica Maria Ferrara (ed.), "Posthumanism in Italian Literature and Film. Boundaries and Identity", Springer, 2020
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Recent articles have highlighted the terrible toll that the Covid-19 pandemic is having on the research of female academics, who are also mothers. My article argues that the pandemic has done no more than laying bare the root cause of... more
Recent articles have highlighted the terrible toll that the Covid-19 pandemic is having on the research of female academics, who are also mothers. My article argues that the pandemic has done no more than laying bare the root cause of systemic gender inequality in academia, i.e. its misogynistic reproductive politics. Even recent commendable initiatives, such as the introduction of quota of female-only professorships in Ireland, will have no long-lasting effect on gender equality until the real victims of unequal policies, mothers with children, will become key players in policy-making. The article uses the powerful allegory of Margaret Atwood’s 2019 Booker prize winner "The Testaments" to discuss the lack of support that men and women bestow upon mothers in academia.
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This is a review article published within the rubric "Translators on Books That Should Be Translated" edited by Stiliana Milkova
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In this article, I remember my interview with Domenico Starnone, the Italian author who was rumoured to be, alone or together with his wife Anita Raja, the face behind world-famous writer Elena Ferrante. As Starnone indicates empathy as... more
In this article, I remember my interview with Domenico Starnone, the Italian author who was rumoured to be, alone or together with his wife Anita Raja, the face behind world-famous writer Elena Ferrante. As Starnone indicates empathy as one of the crucial skills for a successful writer, the article moves on to discuss the relationship between the human and the “other”, the boundaries of human identity in our contemporary society and the fear of losing the sense of singularity in a world without margins. Like the entangled posthuman protagonist of Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, Elena Greco-Lina Cerullo, who manages to counteract the fear of a crumbling world without boundaries, the author Elena Ferrante states the importance of erasing singular identity to create a new transversal relational subject, one in which the individual self disappears to generate an empathic, nearly symbiotic bond.
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Once upon a time there was the storyteller... This brief article reflects upon the fruitful interaction (and borders) between page and stage, theatre and narrative, performance and prose: what happened to the storyteller’s voice, to his –... more
Once upon a time there was the storyteller... This brief article reflects upon the fruitful interaction (and borders) between page and stage, theatre and narrative, performance and prose: what happened to the storyteller’s voice, to his – or her – lively act delivered in a composite blend of vernaculars and standard language, in a playful mixture of low and high registers which combined adventurous or tragic stories and humorous anecdotes?
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This article examines how the Decameron’s frame story and paratext are re-codified in Pasolini’s 1971 cinematic masterpiece. My ultimate aim is to analyse how Pasolini’s idea of authorship interacts with that of his medieval predecessor... more
This article examines how the Decameron’s frame story and paratext are re-codified in Pasolini’s 1971 cinematic masterpiece.
My ultimate aim is to analyse how Pasolini’s idea of authorship interacts with that of his medieval predecessor to express the self-referential subjectivity of the director-author-actor Pasolini embedded in the movie.
Poised between the image of the untrustworthy story-teller Ciappelletto, whose “speech-act” generates the perlocutionary effect of his sanctification, and the image of the painter-director Giotto, whose all-encompassing gaze symbolizes the superiority of cinema as language of reality over literary realism, Pasolini’s concept of authorship is transgressive and performative.
By lending his acting body to the character-author of Giotto, Pasolini emphasizes the issue of gender’s performativity and creates a specific horizon of expectations around the presence of a gay author-director implying the presence of a gay audience. This paper focuses on this concept and emphasizes the dynamic between the logic of visibility and the power of the “unseen” through which Pasolini addresses the complex issue of the lettrici, implied readers and empirical story-tellers of Boccaccio’s Decameron who appear to be absent from the movie
My ultimate aim is to analyse how Pasolini’s idea of authorship interacts with that of his medieval predecessor to express the self-referential subjectivity of the director-author-actor Pasolini embedded in the movie.
Poised between the image of the untrustworthy story-teller Ciappelletto, whose “speech-act” generates the perlocutionary effect of his sanctification, and the image of the painter-director Giotto, whose all-encompassing gaze symbolizes the superiority of cinema as language of reality over literary realism, Pasolini’s concept of authorship is transgressive and performative.
By lending his acting body to the character-author of Giotto, Pasolini emphasizes the issue of gender’s performativity and creates a specific horizon of expectations around the presence of a gay author-director implying the presence of a gay audience. This paper focuses on this concept and emphasizes the dynamic between the logic of visibility and the power of the “unseen” through which Pasolini addresses the complex issue of the lettrici, implied readers and empirical story-tellers of Boccaccio’s Decameron who appear to be absent from the movie
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This paper explores the notion of posthuman identity in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels. In addition, it raises a number of research questions that may prove useful to investigate the much debated issue of Elena Ferrante's identity.... more
This paper explores the notion of posthuman identity in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels. In addition, it raises a number of research questions that may prove useful to investigate the much debated issue of Elena Ferrante's identity. The article links Italo Calvino's postmodern idea of authorial identity according to "Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore" to Ferrante's posthuman subjectt.
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Questo saggio esplora il concetto di soggetto postumano nel ciclo de "L'amica geniale" e formula alcune ipotesi di ricerca utili ad interpretare la tanto dibattuta questione dell'identità autoriale in Elena Ferrante. Il postumanesimo di... more
Questo saggio esplora il concetto di soggetto postumano nel ciclo de "L'amica geniale" e formula alcune ipotesi di ricerca utili ad interpretare la tanto dibattuta questione dell'identità autoriale in Elena Ferrante. Il postumanesimo di Elena Ferrante è messo in relazione con il postmodernismo del Calvino di "Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore".
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La Celestina by Fernando de Rojas was published in Spain for the first time in 1499 as a comedy, and as a tragicomedy in 1502. The first Italian translation of the play was published in Rome in 1506 and gave birth to a parallel and... more
La Celestina by Fernando de Rojas was published in Spain for the first time in 1499 as a comedy, and as a tragicomedy in 1502. The first Italian translation of the play was published in Rome in 1506 and gave birth to a parallel and complementary textual tradition on which the reception and translation of the play in other modern languages (such as French and German) were based. Given the wide success of Celestina in Italy, this essay focuses on the hybrid genre of the play, which can be placed at the crossroads of comic and tragic genres but also on the boundaries between narrative and theatrical modes of expression. It emphasizes the importance of Celestina’s dialogic, parodic, and polyphonic structure, and its links with Dante’s Commedia and Boccaccio’s Decameron. Building on the “working hypothesis” of a Florentine genesis of Celestina, this essay explores its connection with humanist comedy and with Aretino’s comic-burlesque literature.
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Questo articolo propone un'interpretazione in chiave postumana dell'idea di identità così come emerge dalla tetralogia de 'L'amica geniale' di Elena Ferrante. - This article puts forward a reading of the concept of identity in Elena... more
Questo articolo propone un'interpretazione in chiave postumana dell'idea di identità così come emerge dalla tetralogia de 'L'amica geniale' di Elena Ferrante. - This article puts forward a reading of the concept of identity in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels from a posthuman angle.
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The purpose of this article is to link Calvino's prefiguration of posthumanism in the Fifties to his adoption of a narrative model of the 18th century which – at the precise moment when humanism was canonized – managed to challenge the... more
The purpose of this article is to link Calvino's prefiguration of posthumanism in the Fifties to his adoption of a narrative model of the 18th century which – at the precise moment when humanism was canonized – managed to challenge the very foundation of it: Laurence Sterne’s "Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman" (1759-1767).
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This chapter aims at exploring Ferrante's construction of subject identities in the novel The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante which can be linked, on the one hand, to Karen Barad's neo-materialism and, on the other hand, to the... more
This chapter aims at exploring Ferrante's construction of subject identities in the novel The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante which can be linked, on the one hand, to Karen Barad's neo-materialism and, on the other hand, to the author’s intention of re-programming the cognitive subject in a posthuman direction. The protagonist's loss of contact with any logical process grounded on causality and space-time relations is compared with Lina's "smarginatura" in the Neapolitan Novels. In The Days of Abandonment, Ferrante starts exploring the concept, which will be further defined in her most recent novels that reality is not an object of knowledge external to the cognitive subject but rather a “doing” or “becoming” in which subjects and objects are radically enmeshed and entangled with one another. The protagonist is thus presented not as a victim of the events but rather as one of the agents in this process of concurrent causes where all elements involved are equally weighted. In this "performative" reality, a decisive role for the reinstatement of order and rationality in the moral subject is played by the dog Otto, which represents a cathartic element and a turning point in the cognitive process of the protagonist. Otto’s death becomes an existential metaphor and the poignant symbol of the need to acquire a posthuman conscience.
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Questo saggio analizza la metafora del teatro shakespeariano in Conversazione in Sicilia di Vittorini. Il viaggio memoriale di Silvestro, protagonista di Conversazione, nasce da un evento-pretesto che immediatamente svela l'importanza e... more
Questo saggio analizza la metafora del teatro shakespeariano in Conversazione in Sicilia di Vittorini. Il viaggio memoriale di Silvestro, protagonista di Conversazione, nasce da un evento-pretesto che immediatamente svela l'importanza e il valore simbolico del motivo teatrale nel romanzo: la lettera del padre che appare come un fantasma della memoria nei panni di attore shakespeariano, (‘mio padre in Macbeth’). Quest'immagine diviene un leit-motif di Conversazione ed è metafora dell'idea di teatro shakespeariano come modello di arte popolare inteso ad educare le coscienze in funzione anti-borghese e anti-fascista. Il saggio illustra questo punto analizzando in dettaglio i simboli vittoriniani e utilizzando abbondante materiale documentario da alcuni articoli che Vittorini scrisse prima della stesura di Conversazione, oltre che da scritti pubblicati su Il politecnico come riflessione a posteriori.
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In this paper I focus on the matter of identity and anonymity in Ferrante’s work. In particular, I introduce the theme of identity as a major focus of Ferrante’s novels but I dwell specifically on the construction of subject identity... more
In this paper I focus on the matter of identity and anonymity in Ferrante’s work. In particular, I introduce the theme of identity as a major focus of Ferrante’s novels but I dwell specifically on the construction of subject identity in the Neapolitan novels. Essentially, I pose a few questions around the possibility to reconcile the first-personal givennes (Husserl) of the author’s experiential account with her anonymity. I posit that Elena and Lina represent the author’s effort to represent and duplicate/mirror the writer’s struggle of conveying identity, whereas Elena is the writing self and Lina is the double striving towards anonymity in her attempt to self-erasure and also in her post-human re-negotiation of identity vis-à-vis the technological world.
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Italo Calvino: A Hundred-Year World Legacy will be looking at Calvino’s work in translation, at the audiences he reached (and continues to reach) worldwide, and at the diverse impacts his production have had in different regions of the... more
Italo Calvino: A Hundred-Year World Legacy will be looking at Calvino’s work in translation, at the audiences he reached (and continues to reach) worldwide, and at the diverse impacts his production have had in different regions of the world.
We will then focus on Calvino’s understanding of culture as a porous entity with limited or no boundaries, opening up a debate across disciplines that can be observed in his essays but also in the open and experimental form(s) of his creative work.
Lastly, we will reflect on Calvino’s work with other media, stemming from his youthful passion for the theatre, and on the adaptation and remediation of his narrative texts.
We will then focus on Calvino’s understanding of culture as a porous entity with limited or no boundaries, opening up a debate across disciplines that can be observed in his essays but also in the open and experimental form(s) of his creative work.
Lastly, we will reflect on Calvino’s work with other media, stemming from his youthful passion for the theatre, and on the adaptation and remediation of his narrative texts.
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Podcast of the conversation between Dr. Enrica Maria Ferrara and the presenter Sean Rocks for the cultural programme of RTE Radio 1 - Arena: https://www.rte.ie/radio/utils/share/radio1/21894865 I was invited on the occasion of the 700th... more
Podcast of the conversation between Dr. Enrica Maria Ferrara and the presenter Sean Rocks for the cultural programme of RTE Radio 1 - Arena: https://www.rte.ie/radio/utils/share/radio1/21894865
I was invited on the occasion of the 700th anniversary of Dante's death to illustrate the relevance of the poem to a wider audience. The intro is the famous remark by Donald Tusk about the special place that politicians supporting Brexit would have had in Dante's Inferno.
I was invited on the occasion of the 700th anniversary of Dante's death to illustrate the relevance of the poem to a wider audience. The intro is the famous remark by Donald Tusk about the special place that politicians supporting Brexit would have had in Dante's Inferno.
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Youtube video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceYDghs0VRo Moderated by Michael Cronin in conversation with the editor, Enrica Maria Ferrara. Readings by Tiziano Scarpa. In English with readings in Italian Over the past two... more
Youtube video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceYDghs0VRo
Moderated by Michael Cronin in conversation with the editor, Enrica Maria Ferrara. Readings by Tiziano Scarpa. In English with readings in Italian
Over the past two centuries human identity has undeniably changed, renegotiating boundaries with nonhuman animals, the environment, technology and digital devices. This is a topic particularly relevant in the current climate considering the impact of nonhuman agents such as the coronavirus, environmental disasters, and smart technology on what it means to be human. A new posthuman human has emerged between the second half of the 19th century and our times. How has this new identity been captured in Italian literature and film?
Moderated by Michael Cronin in conversation with the editor, Enrica Maria Ferrara. Readings by Tiziano Scarpa. In English with readings in Italian
Over the past two centuries human identity has undeniably changed, renegotiating boundaries with nonhuman animals, the environment, technology and digital devices. This is a topic particularly relevant in the current climate considering the impact of nonhuman agents such as the coronavirus, environmental disasters, and smart technology on what it means to be human. A new posthuman human has emerged between the second half of the 19th century and our times. How has this new identity been captured in Italian literature and film?
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This is a 3-minute podcast summarising the main themes and sections of the edited volume "Posthumanism in Italian Literature and Film: Boundaries and Identity" (Palgrave Macmillan: 2020) Here it is the link:... more
This is a 3-minute podcast summarising the main themes and sections of the edited volume "Posthumanism in Italian Literature and Film: Boundaries and Identity" (Palgrave Macmillan: 2020)
Here it is the link: https://soundcloud.com/ucd-humanities/enrica-ferrara-posthumanism-in-italian-literature-and-film-boundaries-and-identity
Here it is the link: https://soundcloud.com/ucd-humanities/enrica-ferrara-posthumanism-in-italian-literature-and-film-boundaries-and-identity
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Can translated texts preserve the identity of prose narratives originally written in a mixture of standard language and dialect? If the emotional core of our identity may be found in these "suppressed" languages, is it not our ethical... more
Can translated texts preserve the identity of prose narratives originally written in a mixture of standard language and dialect? If the emotional core of our identity may be found in these "suppressed" languages, is it not our ethical responsibility to try and preserve the process of code-switching when translating a text into a different language?
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This is a short presentation read at the book launch of "Altrove" by Roberto Bertoni at the Italian Cultural Institute in Dublin on 24 October 2014. Two of the stories included in this book, which has been originally published in Italian,... more
This is a short presentation read at the book launch of "Altrove" by Roberto Bertoni at the Italian Cultural Institute in Dublin on 24 October 2014. Two of the stories included in this book, which has been originally published in Italian, were translated into English by Maria Tirelli Sheil and subsequently published with the title "Two Stories from Parlomino" (Turin: Nuova Trauben, 2015).
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Enrica Maria Ferrara (2021): Elena Ferrante as World Literature, Italian
Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2021.1936796
Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2021.1936796
Research Interests: Comparative Literature, Gender Studies, Visual Studies, Women's Studies, Feminist Theory, and 12 moreItalian Literature, Literature and Visual Arts, World Literature, Italian women writers, Feminist Geography, Interdisciplinary Studies, Affect (Cultural Theory), Contemporary Italian Literature, Literary translation, Letteratura italiana moderna e contemporanea, Interdisciplinarity in the Arts (experimental poetry, ekphrasis, contemporary art), and Elena Ferrante
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A review of the first monograph on Elena Ferrante which provides an indispensable scholarly vademecum to navigate the labyrinthine oeuvre of the elusive Italian author. "Elena Ferrante’s Key Words" is a faithful rendition of the original... more
A review of the first monograph on Elena Ferrante which provides an indispensable scholarly vademecum to navigate the labyrinthine oeuvre of the elusive Italian author. "Elena Ferrante’s Key Words" is a faithful rendition of the original Italian source text, first published in
2018 as "Elena Ferrante. Parole chiave" (Rome: E/O). The accomplished English version by Will Schutt has the merit to capture the density and precision of De Rogatis’ effervescent, well-crafted prose.
The review can be found on pp. 559-561.
2018 as "Elena Ferrante. Parole chiave" (Rome: E/O). The accomplished English version by Will Schutt has the merit to capture the density and precision of De Rogatis’ effervescent, well-crafted prose.
The review can be found on pp. 559-561.
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"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" could be the epigraph of Elena Ferrante's book The Lying Life of Adults (translated by Ann Goldstein), the "tangled knot" of truth and lies in which the first-person narrator Giovanna pours her... more
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" could be the epigraph of Elena Ferrante's book The Lying Life of Adults (translated by Ann Goldstein), the "tangled knot" of truth and lies in which the first-person narrator Giovanna pours her aching heart. The "beholder" in the novel is the protagonist's father, Andrea Trada, a high-school teacher of "refined manner" and "inimitable elegance", who believes that twelve-year old Giovanna "is getting the face" of his sister Vittoria, in which "ugliness and spite were combined to perfection". Even though she has no recollection of Vittoria's appearance, Giovanna's entire world crumbles upon realizing that she might have inherited her aunt's features. A frantic search through family's old pictures bears no fruit; not only Vittoria has been blanked by Andrea in real life, she has also been erased from all the photos. The estranged aunt is not just absent, she has been cancelled out, emblematically turned into a radical "other", a topic so current at this moment in time. This review explores Ferrante's posthumanist worldview in this novel, in opposition to binary patriarchal structures, Giovanna's self-objectification, the bracelet as a posthuman tool endowed with agency.
The review was published shortly after the live review on the radio programme RTE Arena, RTE Radio 1. The podcast and the written review can also be accessed here: https://www.rte.ie/culture/2020/0909/1164200-reviewed-the-lying-life-of-adults-by-elena-ferrante/
The review was published shortly after the live review on the radio programme RTE Arena, RTE Radio 1. The podcast and the written review can also be accessed here: https://www.rte.ie/culture/2020/0909/1164200-reviewed-the-lying-life-of-adults-by-elena-ferrante/
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"Ponendosi da una «prospettiva critico-estetica gramsciana centrata sulla nozione di intellettuale ed egemonia» (p. 15), Francese ipotizza che dopo l’assassinio dei magistrati Falcone e Borsellino nel1992, Consolo abbia sentito il bisogno... more
"Ponendosi da una «prospettiva critico-estetica gramsciana centrata sulla nozione di intellettuale ed egemonia» (p. 15), Francese ipotizza che dopo l’assassinio dei magistrati Falcone e Borsellino nel1992, Consolo abbia sentito il bisogno di partecipare in modo più concreto ed impegnato al dibattito civile trasformando la sua funzione pubblica di intellettuale da «quella del “contastorie”, il quale non può far altro che consolare, a quella di un più maturo “narratore” benjaminiano» (pp. 5-6) [...] Esperto di poetiche consoliane, e di poetiche letterarie del Novecento in particolare (nonchè di estetica gramsciana), Joseph Francese conferma la sua propensione per una lucida analisi filologica
del testo coniugata con una rara abilità a collocare eventi ed autori studiati in una prospettiva storicaaccuratamente delineata. I precedenti studi di Francese su Calvino, Pasolini, Sciascia, Gramsci e sullo stesso Consolo nutrono quest’opera monografica e la rendono un testo importante non solo per la comprensione dell’opera consoliana ma anche per la ricostruzione di una porzione fondamentale della storia intellettuale italiana nella seconda metà del XX secolo."
del testo coniugata con una rara abilità a collocare eventi ed autori studiati in una prospettiva storicaaccuratamente delineata. I precedenti studi di Francese su Calvino, Pasolini, Sciascia, Gramsci e sullo stesso Consolo nutrono quest’opera monografica e la rendono un testo importante non solo per la comprensione dell’opera consoliana ma anche per la ricostruzione di una porzione fondamentale della storia intellettuale italiana nella seconda metà del XX secolo."
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"Al crocevia tra manuale di storia della cultura, saggio filosofico e morale, oltre che raffinato studio di analisi letteraria condotto con rigoroso metodo storicistico e acume filologico, questa storia dell'umorismo di Giancarlo Alfano... more
"Al crocevia tra manuale di storia della cultura, saggio filosofico e morale, oltre che raffinato studio di analisi letteraria condotto con rigoroso metodo storicistico e acume filologico, questa storia dell'umorismo di Giancarlo Alfano si interroga sulle origini del comportamento umoristico a partire dall'antica teoria degli umori, passando per Petrarca, Montaigne, Cartesio, Sterne, fino a Musil e Gadda. Esperto di tecniche dell’oralità e dell’intersezione fra scrittura e performatività nella letteratura italiana da Boccaccio a Basile, nonchè studioso delle scritture intransitive nella letteratura europea - da Gadda a D’Arrigo, da Beckett a Pynchon - Giancarlo Alfano è riuscito ad imbrigliare in un disegno nitido e coerente una materia che per la sua stessa natura policentrica non era facile inquadrare con rigore."
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In "Oblio", IV, 14-15, Autunno 2014, pp. 214-216.
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in "Italian Culture", Vol,. XXXIII, n. 2, September 2015, pp. 153-156.
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Even though its title might lead us to believe that this volume aims to fulfil primarily an educational role for Boccaccio’s students of third-level educational institutions, we are pleasantly surprised to discover that Alfano has managed... more
Even though its title might lead us to believe that this volume
aims to fulfil primarily an educational role for Boccaccio’s students of third-level educational institutions, we are pleasantly surprised to discover that Alfano has managed to build his original scholarly research on Boccaccio into this work, which should be read in parallel with the new edition and commentary of the Decameron published by Rizzoli in 2014 for which Alfano compiled the introductory notes of each novella and Boccaccio’s biographical profile (Boccaccio, Giovanni. Decameron. A cura di Amedeo Quondam, Maurizio Fiorilla e Giancarlo Alfano. Milano: Rizzoli. BUR
Classici. 2013).
aims to fulfil primarily an educational role for Boccaccio’s students of third-level educational institutions, we are pleasantly surprised to discover that Alfano has managed to build his original scholarly research on Boccaccio into this work, which should be read in parallel with the new edition and commentary of the Decameron published by Rizzoli in 2014 for which Alfano compiled the introductory notes of each novella and Boccaccio’s biographical profile (Boccaccio, Giovanni. Decameron. A cura di Amedeo Quondam, Maurizio Fiorilla e Giancarlo Alfano. Milano: Rizzoli. BUR
Classici. 2013).
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Recent literature has highlighted how the decentralization of the human has led to a re-configuration and re-negotiation of subject identities with the purpose of finding new ways of " becoming " individual. The new subjects emerging from... more
Recent literature has highlighted how the decentralization of the human has led to a re-configuration and re-negotiation of subject identities with the purpose of finding new ways of " becoming " individual. The new subjects emerging from this process, that has the loss of anthropocentrism at its core, strive to renegotiate their identity vis-á-vis the non-human world of animals, inanimate entities and technological artefacts. The essays collected in the volume provisionally titled Posthuman Boundaries and Identity in Italian Literature and Film aim to capture the various posthuman shapes and formats that human identity takes in contemporary Italian narrative and film. In particular, we are interested in research papers dealing with posthuman texts viewed as an expression of intellectual identity and ideological commitment. Even if our main focus is on the Italian context, in the true spirit of posthumanism with its decentralizing and centrifugal force superseding national, social, ethnic, gender, species and technological boundaries, this volume will also include a number of essays dealing with aspects of Italian literature and film analyzed through the lens of comparative literature and film. The wide questions which the editors of this volume seek to address are the following: How is human identity represented in a posthuman world where all matter has agency and knowledge is " performed " by all animate and inanimate beings rather than controlled by the human subject? How are writers, intellectuals and artists responding (or have responded) to this challenge? Are they imagining new 'posthuman' ways of being a human and an intellectual?
Deadline for abstracts: 20 August 2017
Deadline for abstracts: 20 August 2017
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This volume deals with natural disasters in late medieval and early modern central and southern Italy. Contributions look at a range of catastrophic events such as eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, floods, earthquakes, and outbreaks of plague... more
This volume deals with natural disasters in late medieval and early modern central and southern Italy. Contributions look at a range of catastrophic events such as eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, floods, earthquakes, and outbreaks of plague and epidemics. A major aim of this volume is to investigate the relationship between catastrophic events and different communication strategies that embraced politics, religion, propaganda, dissent, scholarship as well as collective responses from the lower segments of society. The contributors to this volume share a multidisciplinary approach to the study of natural disasters which draws on disciplines such as cultural and social history, anthropology, literary theory, and linguistics. Together with analyzing the prolific production of propagandistic material and literary sources issued in periods of acute crisis, the documentation on disasters studied in this volume also includes laws and emergency regulations, petitions and pleas to the authorities, scientific and medical treatises, manuscript and printed newsletters as well as diplomatic dispatches and correspondence.
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"Trust" is the story of a high school teacher, Pietro, and his former lover Teresa. To hold together their passionate but crumbling relationship Pietro and Teresa make a pact: each reveals their most hideous secret to the other so that... more
"Trust" is the story of a high school teacher, Pietro, and his former lover Teresa. To hold together their passionate but crumbling relationship Pietro and Teresa make a pact: each reveals their most hideous secret to the other so that they will always be tied together through the knowledge of the other’s secret. Nevertheless, the two of them separate soon after they make the pact. But the prospect of Teresa revealing his secret hangs over Pietro’s head and shapes his behavior. Pietro marries, has children, and his career takes off. Teresa becomes a renowned scientist who settles down in New York. Trust narrates these events through three different voices: Pietro’s account, Teresa’s account, and the account of Pietro’s daughter Emma. These three stories complicate our understanding of what really happened and whom we should trust.
Listen to the Review here: https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22016262/
Listen to the Review here: https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22016262/
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A reading of the film "Pinocchio" (2019) directed by Matteo Garrone through the lens of posthumanism, with reference to the original novel by Carlo Collodi, "The Adventures of Pinocchio". The article is in Italian. Una lettura... more
A reading of the film "Pinocchio" (2019) directed by Matteo Garrone through the lens of posthumanism, with reference to the original novel by Carlo Collodi, "The Adventures of Pinocchio". The article is in Italian.
Una lettura postumanista del film "Pinocchio" (2019), diretto da Matteo Garrone, con riferimento al romanzo di Carlo Collodi, "Le avventure di Pinocchio".
Una lettura postumanista del film "Pinocchio" (2019), diretto da Matteo Garrone, con riferimento al romanzo di Carlo Collodi, "Le avventure di Pinocchio".
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Research Interests: Translation Studies, Translation theory, Gothic Literature, World Literature, 19th-Century American Literature, and 10 more19th Century British (Literature), The Fantastic, Edgar Allan Poe, Literary translation, Mary Shelley, Lawrence Venuti, Letteratura italiana, 19th Century Italian literature, Scapigliatura, and Literary reviews
This special issue “Reading Natalia Ginzburg” responds to the renewed interest in her writing in the Anglophone world and posits that Ginzburg’s texts capture many of our own struggles today. It includes original essays, interviews, and... more
This special issue “Reading Natalia Ginzburg” responds to the renewed interest in her writing in the Anglophone world and posits that Ginzburg’s texts capture many of our own struggles today. It includes original essays, interviews, and first-time English translations of an essay by Italo Calvino and of Natalia Ginzburg's translation manifesto.
"Reading Natalia Ginzburg” introduces the general reader to Ginzburg’s life and writing; it explores the texts, voices, bodies, and spaces that define her style and subject matter; and highlights the work of her translators.
"Reading Natalia Ginzburg” introduces the general reader to Ginzburg’s life and writing; it explores the texts, voices, bodies, and spaces that define her style and subject matter; and highlights the work of her translators.