Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels

Set for the most part in a violent and poor post-Second World War Naples, Elena Ferrante's L'amica geniale (2011) [My Brilliant Friend (2012)] tetralogy, besides chronicling the lifelong friendship between the two main characters, Elena and Lila, also offers a cross-section of Italian history of the last seventy years through a revisited Bildungsroman structure. Based on this premise, the article analyses some of Ferrante's narrative choices that combine genre and gender elements in readdressing and retelling, from an embodied female-gendered viewpoint, Italian historical turning points, such as the economic miracle of the 1950s and 1960s, the social and sexual revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s, and the collapse of left-wing ideologies and the progressive degeneration of the Italian political system from the 1980s onwards.