Elena Ferrante as World Literature by Stiliana Milkova

Abstract

Reviewed by: Elena Ferrante as World Literature by Stiliana Milkova Carlotta Moro Elena Ferrante as World Literature. By Stiliana Milkova. (Literatures as World Literature) New York: Bloomsbury Academic. 2021. x+214 pp. £90. ISBN 978–1–5013–5752–7. Published in the wake of a global onset of Ferrante fever, Stiliana Milkova's Elena Ferrante as World Literature is the first comprehensive English-language monograph on the acclaimed Italian author. The volume provides an original and accessible analysis of Ferrante's corpus of writings, encompassing both fiction and non-fiction, and rigorously drawing on an impressive multidisciplinary array of interpretative tools that range from classical mythology, to Freudian psychoanalysis, to feminist theory. Addressing the crucial role of translators in Ferrante's international rise, the introductory chapter argues that her powerful impact on the world literary scene stems from her creation of a universal feminine imaginary that resists the mechanisms of violence and gender inequality that characterize our age. Following this, the neologisms frantumaglia and smarginatura are proposed as the lexical, psychic, and spatial parameters of Ferrante's theory of feminine experience. Unfurling the semantic layers of these terms, Milkova observes that frantumaglia and smarginatura are used to excavate and describe the turmoil that [End Page 264] afflicts Ferrante's protagonists, who fall into an abyss of suffering as a result of male violence yet always resurface as creative entities. The opening paragraph of Elena Ferrante as World Literature presents the monograph as the fruit of the intellectual exchange that Milkova had with her mother. In a similar way, Ferrante's writing on maternal identity is also understood as an ongoing dialogue with a genealogy of literary foremothers that includes Sibilla Aleramo, Elsa Morante, Natalia Ginzburg, and Alba de Céspedes, among others. The sweeping chapter on 'Binding and Unbinding the Maternal Body and Voice' identifies the visceral bond between mothers and daughters as the overriding concern of Ferrante's literature. Milkova concludes that by giving life to dysfunctional and devious mothers Ferrante challenges a pervasive cultural paradigm in which creativity has been vanquished by self-sacrificing child-rearing. The chapter entitled 'Outside the Frame: The Aesthetics of Female Creativity and Authorship' brilliantly surveys the signature visual trope of the contained female figure which recurs in Ferrante's universe, where women appear framed by mirrors, as mutilated bodies on a cropped canvas, or in commodified and eroticized paintings and photographs. Imprisoned by an androcentric artistic and literary tradition, Ferrante's narrators struggle to break free from aesthetics that objectify them. With innovative references to feminist art theory and the works of women artists, Milkova illustrates how Ferrante's heroines appropriate the patriarchal iconography of dismemberment in order to wield creative power and to lay the foundations for a feminist artistic legacy. The chapter 'Mapping Urban Feminine Topographies' meticulously examines cityscapes and gendered spatial hierarchies in Ferrante's narratives. The hostile urban settings of Turin and Naples are configured as masculinist spaces: as in the myth of Theseus and Ariadne, Naples is envisioned as a labyrinth designed to punish female desire, while Turin is inscribed with monuments that celebrate male political, military, and cultural dominance. Tracing the journeys undertaken by Delia, Olga, Elena, and Lila across these settings, the chapter suggests that their perambulations remap the patriarchal cartography that erased them, creating new feminine localities that fit their subjectivities. The Epilogue, a short analysis of The Lying Life of Adults, charts the development of defining motifs in Ferrante's thought, such as Naples as the topography of the self, the significance of female genealogy, and the reflection of the female body in the mirror. As she masterfully weaves together a repertoire of tropes and preoccupations that span Ferrante's entire writing career across different genres and media, Milkova deftly untangles common thematic threads, draws out analogies, unveils shared patterns, and displays how Ferrante's feminine imaginary has matured over the course of thirty years. Although she convincingly advocates for the inclusion of Ferrante in the canon of world literature, Milkova never loses sight of the author's Italian roots. Indeed, particularly cogent is the extensive consideration of the profound influence exerted by Italian women writers, artists, and philosophers on Ferrante...