The Elena Ferrante Phenomenon | Italics

This month on Italics we will visit the Elena Ferrante phenomenon. Here in the U.S, Ferrante is best known for her New York Times best-selling Neapolitan Quartet of Novels about two friends growing up in post-war Italy. One of the nation’s most beloved novelists today, Elena Ferrante has garnered great praise both in Italy and in the United States.

To discuss this nonpareil cultural event with us are Giancarlo Lombardi, Professor and Executive Officer of the Department of Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and Rebecca Falkoff, Professor of Italian at New York University. Both guests have significant publications on Elena Ferrante.

As both novelist and, now, the television series on HBO, which is adapted from the first of four novels, My Brilliant Friend, the Elena Ferrante phenomenon just seems to grow more and more.
(Taped: 10/16/2018)

Italics, Television for the Italian American Experience is a monthly presentation in the CUNY Presents timeslot that features prominent Italian Americans in the arts, business, government, sports, academia, and more. Each episode explores various aspects of the Italian diaspora, Italian-American history and traditions, contemporary Italian-American life, and takes a projected look at the future of the Italian-American community.

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[MCFLobo]

The best analysis of Elena Ferrante's work to date, and I'm completely in love with Ferrante's writing. Thank you. Greetings from Portugal.

[cherrysherry]

I couldn’t wait for the next series of ‘My Brilliant Friend” to come out so I bought the books and I just finished reading the last one. I absolutely loved it and couldn’t put it down. Thank you Elena whoever you are and just wow!!

[Himmelhauser]

Great popular art. I’m just reading The Lost Daughter, which feels like a key to the Neapolitan books.

[michellevera]

These men are constantly cutting off the woman panelist. You'll notice that she politely starts to say something and each time, she's talked over. Eventually, around the 13 minute mark, as someone below pointed out, she can talk. Notice how quickly she is talking. This is classic "woman finally gets a chance to talk so she has to say everything fast before she gets cut off again." And this is happening in a talk about Elena Ferrante, of all people?!

[simonsbuddy]

"I cannot speak for how it feels for a woman, but certainly as a man"...I can dominate the discussion to the exclusion of Dr. Falkoff, who is reduced to a bobble head...isn't anyone embarassed by this? Minute 13:34, she starts to contribute and the video links cut her off and Dr. Lombardi comes right back in...and I hate to say this, as Dr. Lombardi gives a thoughtful and entertaining commentary. But there is no effort on the part of the moderator to present a balanced show...no self-awareness. This is my first Italics and it is a disappointment. Life imitates art.

[luketursi]

Thanks for this. I've added Ferrante to my reading list and my DVR.

[kathyreynolds]

Excellent movie and acting spectacular

[karelius]

The woman professor doesn't get much of a chance to speak, as when she starts talking the men step in. Typical Italian? Ironic since a strong theme in the novel is domestic violence. Here, we didn't get a woman's point of view. She is a professor of Italian and would be knowledgeable about the use of Napolitano and, obviously, domestic violence.

[haussmann]

There is a moment when she start to talk and there enters a song and after the man talks. We dont listen her.

[anne-marierusso]

Interesting when talking about gender: the male professor talks over the female professor "mansplaining" . I would have like to have heard more from the female, seeing it's a female theme. Men are still bombastic and selfish when it comes to exchanging ideas. Disappointing. However, very interesting overall.

[VRFTranslations]

On the question of anonymity, I cannot help but think that literature throughout the millennia was not interested in the author. Homer was one or many narrators whose cycle lasted a very long time. Socrate thought that writing was overrated, he wanted to talk and convince people with a gentle Socratic method of getting the truth out of people. The Bible itself has writers who do not MARKET themselves, and there are several Isaias and, it's obvious, there are many voices in Genesis often contradicting one another. Harold Blook has come up with the Book of J to try to bring women into the Biblical writing world of antiquity where she must have been and we know nothing about it. The cult of the writer comes at a much later time and is tied to commerce and publishing and making money and manipulating the reader as it tries to pick his pocket.

[johnguy]

Female Writer Who Won World's Biggest Literary Prize Turns Out To Be Three Men....
An anonymous writer who has been likened to Italy's pseudonymous Ellena Ferrante was just awarded a €1MM ($1.16MM dollars) literary prize for her dazzling work as a groundbreaking female author. There's only one minor clarification - She is a he.

Well, she's actually three men. According to the FT, Carmen Mola, an author who until now has been presented as a female university professor writing under a pen name because of her desire for anonymity (something nobody would question since progressive critics would simply assume she's doing this to protect herself from online hate hate speech), revealed her true identity to the world when the main prize was awarded in the presence of the Spanish King.

[marielleladt]

Why to read antifeminist behaviour in everything.? Once we recognize certain obvious tendenciesin society why always vfocus on it?
It is a bit anoying that emphacise on always talking about how women were second class citizen. Today we are facing a propaganda machine that want to erase the past because it was fair to women or to minorities but that was the past. Today we are taking extreme position. 28:49

[sylviacline]

My Brilliant Friend could NOT have been written by a man!!!

[aliciasciascia]

Neapolitan is not just a dialect, it’s a language in its own right. Additionally, Elena Ferrante might not even be a woman, who even knows if they are Neapolitan, or human for that matter. It might be an AI story. All I know is that the mysterious manipulation is disrespectful, and for that reason I will never buy or support the books or series.

[brandgardner]

Isn't it the case that she turned out to be a Polish jew? Is this not "appropriating"?

[LS-htlk]

They literally mansplained and talked over this woman constantly. Learn from Ferrante !

[brandgardner]

a polish jew pretending to be italian. is this "cultural appropriation"?