Tag Archives: Enrica Maria Ferrara
Finding the Father: Marta Barone’s “Sunken City,” Translated from Italian by Julia MacGibbon
Confronted with the absence of her father, Marta Barone does not give up her quest but interrogates, with determination and resilience, objects, places, streets, pictures that once crossed L.B.’s path. Aware of knowing a “poorer version,” simplified and bare, of her father’s story, the narrator wanders around the cities of Milan and Turin, lets the places speak to her and recomposes, trace after trace, the identity of her parent as it emerges also from photographs, accounts of friends and enemies, militants of Prima Linea, Servire il Popolo, and other extreme left-wing organizations.
Join Us! Domenico Starnone in Conversation with Enrica Maria Ferrara and Stiliana Milkova
To celebrate both special issue “Reading Domenico Starnone” and the publication of Starnone’s latest novel in English, “Trust” (Europa Editions) translated by Pulitzer prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri, the Italian Cultural Institute in Dublin is hosting an online conversation with Domenico Starnone (in Italian with English translation), on 26 October 2021 at 6pm GMT (7pm in Italy), moderated by the editors of Reading Domenico Starnone.
“Literature is the Sudden Disintegration of the Verbal Fabric of Everyday Life”: Domenico Starnone in Conversation with Enrica Maria Ferrara and Stiliana Milkova
I love the idea that the city we have left behind enshrines the ghost of the person we could have become, for better or worse, had we stayed there. And I am very fond of the idea that the ghost, which we consider part of us and therefore a friend, may turn out to be frightening or hostile.
“Via Gemito”: Domenico Starnone’s Ur-Text
From the very beginning, readers are confronted with an exhausting tension between father and son, their antithetic visions threatening at every step to converge and become enmeshed into the furious flow of Mimi’s narrative which, despite his alleged commitment to a serene composure, is far from tidy or calming. That prose is, after all, the exhibition of a carefully performed identity, constructed through repetition of linguistic and paralinguistic gestures, reminding us of Butler’s idea that subjects are the effect of signifying practices and social discourse (Butler 1999).
Love, Death, and Language in Starnone’s “Vita mortale e immortale della bambina di Milano”
On the surface, “Vita mortale e immortale della bambina di Milano” (“Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl from Milan”), Domenico Starnone’s latest literary gem (Einaudi, October 2021), has a deceptively simple plot. It relays the wondrous deeds of a young boy, Mimì (short for Domenico) who has a morbid curiosity towards death and is also the protagonist of three tragicomic love affairs.
The Alphabet of “Via Gemito”: A Photo Essay by Silvio Perrella
One day, a few years ago, Domenico Starnone himself came to my house for a visit. He brought his Via Gemito to my Via Luigia Sanfelice, so to say.
Elena Ferrante in a Global Context
This special issue was born out of the interweaving of our personal and professional stories, at the intersection of our different mother tongues and acquired languages, homelands, and disciplinary backgrounds. An Italian-Neapolitan scholar in Italy, a Bulgarian scholar in the United States, and a German scholar in the United Kingdom, we found a common ground through the study of Elena Ferrante and on the pages of a 2016 volume of the Italian scholarly journal Allegoria.
Queering Family Roles and Gender Norms in Natalia Ginzburg’s “Valentino”
By Enrica Maria Ferrara Traditionally, Natalia Ginzburg was seen as a writer who did not take sides with the feminist movement, refused to endorse the cause of women as victims and men as perpetrators, thus conveying a “disinterested view of sexual politics that has inevitably alienated both male chauvinists and militant feminists” (Bullock 1-2). While […]
Translators and Their Ghosts: Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s “Fantastic Tales,” Translated from Italian by Lawrence Venuti
Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s Fantastic Tales (Archipelago Books, 2020) is a reprint of the 1992 original Mercury House edition translated from Italian by Lawrence Venuti, one of the most influential scholars of translation today.