Major Figures in Italian History and Culture (370-0-20)

Topic

Experimental Lives: Friendship and Love in Ferrant

Instructors

Alessia Ricciardi
847/491-8259
1860 S. Campus Drive, Crowe Hall #2-133

Meeting Info

FRIT Grad Sem Rm 2130 - Crowe: Tues, Thurs 3:30PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

In this course, we will read works by two of today's most celebrated novelists: Elena Ferrante and Annie Ernaux. Ferrante has been hailed by The New York Times as the author of the best book of the 21st century, My Brilliant Friend, while Ernaux has been recognized with the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2022 as one of the world's most vital practitioners of the art of autofiction. Both authors have created a new intimacy on the page, experimenting with radical forms of friendship and love. Indeed, Ferrante and Ernaux's cliché-annihilating explorations of loneliness, troubled and troubling emotions, sexuality, and violence may be said to suggest nothing less than a creative and disruptive refashioning of traditional feminist concerns on an epic narrative scale. To clarify the significance of this project, we will read Ferrante's The Days of Abandonment and My Brilliant Friend and Ernaux's Simple Passion in dialogue with major writings of Italian and French feminist philosophy. Texts by Cavarero, Cixous, de Beauvoir, Ferrante, Ernaux, Kristeva, Lonzi, and Muraro.

Evaluation Method

Requirements and Evaluation:
• Attendance and active participation (20%).
• One oral presentation (10-15 minutes; 20%).
• One short paper (3-4 pages; 20%)
• Final paper (8-9 pages; 40%)

Class Materials (Required)

Books:
• Elena Ferrante, The Days of Abandonment (Europa, 2005)
• --, My Brilliant Friend (Europa, 2012)
• Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion (Seven Stories Press, 2003)
• All other required texts will be available on Canvas

Class Attributes

Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area