Elena Ferrante's Key Words

Description

"I greatly admire the work of Tiziana de Rogatis. She is a reader of deep refinement. Often I think that she knows my books better than I. So, I read her with admiration and remain silent." -Elena Ferrante, in the magazine, San Lian Sheng HuoZhou Kan Ferrante's four-volume novel cycle known in English as the Neapolitan quartet has become a global success, with over ten million readers in close to fifty countries. Her readers recount feeling "addicted" to the novels; they describe a pleasure in reading that is as rare as it is irresistible, a compulsion that leads them either to devour the books or to ration them so as to prolong the pleasure. De Rogatis here addresses that same transnational, diverse, transversal audience. Keywords is conceived as a lighted path made of luminous key words that synthesise the multiform aspects of Ferrante's writing and guide us through the labyrinth of her global success.

Born in Naples, Tiziana de Rogatis is currently an associate professor of Comparative Literature at the University for Foreigners of Siena. Her recent work analyzes modern constructions of the feminine interpreted in an anthropological manner via the reemergence of classical myths. She has written and lectured widely on Elena Ferrante in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, Asia and the United States. She lives in Rome. Will Schutt is the author of Westerly, winner of the 2012 Yale Series of Younger Poets award. His poems and translations have appeared in Agni, Narrative, The New Republic, and The Southern Review. For his translations of poems by Edoardo Sanguineti he received grants from the NEA and PEN/America. He lives in Baltimore.