Metodo

International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Series | Book | Chapter

224193

"An educated identity"

the school as a modernist chronotope in ferrante's neapolitan novels

Stephanie V. Love

pp. 71-97

Abstract

This chapter explores the contrast between the school and the neighborhood as the primary symbolic, ideological, and embodied narrative dichotomy of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels. This salient opposition operates as a metonym and metaphor for a series of other binaries characteristic of the "totalizing category" (Keane 47) of post-World War II modernity. In this sense, the school/neighborhood dichotomy in the Neapolitan Novels can be understood as the primary motif of the "modernist chronotope" (Dick). Love argues that despite the attempts of the projects of modernity to discursively create a stark separation between the past and the present, the Neapolitan Novels provide an alternative narrative that describes the fluid, dynamic movements from one chronotopic domain to another.

Publication details

Published in:

Russo Bullaro Grace, Love Stephanie V. (2016) The works of Elena Ferrante: reconfiguring the margins. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Pages: 71-97

DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-57580-7_4

Full citation:

Love Stephanie V. (2016) „"An educated identity": the school as a modernist chronotope in ferrante's neapolitan novels“, In: G. Russo Bullaro & S. V. Love (eds.), The works of Elena Ferrante, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 71–97.