Since its first book's release in 2011, Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet has become a global phenomenon, selling over 10 million copies in more than 40 countries and 30 languages, and being adapted into a TV series by HBO/RAI in 2018. Yet, much scholarship on the tetralogy, until this point, has limited its discussion to themes of female friendship, motherhood, competition, and class conflict and mobility. Furthermore, much mainstream analysis has avoided the quartet entirely, focusing only on Ferrante's pseudonymous identity as author. This thesis argues that, to fully attend to the unique features of the Neapolitan Novels, we must view the project as situated within the larger tradition of world literature. To that end, this thesis illuminates the ways in which the internal narrative world of the Neapolitan Novels theorizes and interacts with the external world of book circulation. By parsing out the entanglement of interactions between local, national, and global languages, economies, communities, and texts, this thesis demonstrates the network of contributors and agents (author, narrator, publisher, translator, reviewer, reader, etc.) which creates various meanings in a globally circulating world literature text. In my first chapter, I analyze the circulation of books and written texts within the quartet: Little Women by American author Louisa May Alcott, The Blue Fairy by one of the quartet's protagonists, Lila, the first novel of the other protagonist and narrator, Lenù, and the IBM manuals that Lila and Enzo use later in the series. My second chapter takes a close look at Ferrante's reception in Italy and the US through newspaper articles. My third chapter investigates language and translation in both the novels and TV show with a particular analysis of the show's production and technology as a text of world literature.
"},{"label":"Degree","value":["Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors"]},{"label":"Author-supplied Keywords","value":["Elena Ferrante","World literature","Translation"]},{"label":"Administrative Note","value":"Drupal Node ID: 23680