https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/19/elena-ferrante-anonymity-lets-me-concentrate-exclusively-on-writing
And here is her website:
http://elenaferrante.com
We will begin by reading My Brilliant Friend, the first of a series of four novels set in Naples.
Elena Ferrante is as famous for her decision to remain anonymous as she is for her writing. Nobody knows who she is; she has refused face-to-face interviews, both here and in Italy, leading to a vicious guessing game: Is Elena Ferrante a man? Is she more than one person? Since the question of who "Elena Ferrante" is finds itself in every discussion of her work, I'd like you to reflect on your own ideas of authorship before you begin reading her work. Is it a persona carefully constructed through a book or a series of books? A person we imagine as we read?
From a historical perspective, the author is a modern invention: literary works were transcribed from oral legends passed down through generations, altered so many times in the telling that no one could trace it to a single source. The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Arabian Nights, Beowulf will suffice as examples. This changed with the advent of the novel and the development of print culture, which gave birth to the author. This celebrated person, however, was almost always male. When women published, they did so anonymously or used a male pseudonym. (The first novel in France was published anonymously by a woman whom we later learned was Madame de Lafayette). Women writers did not come into their own until the twentieth century, when they began to use fiction to search for their voice. Their quest for their authority coincided with male writers' discovery of the "death of the subject," when, under the sway of Roland Barthes and Foucault, male writers were finding freedom in practices of writing that liberated the author from claims to authority or knowledge….Just as women were beginning to discover their authority, the author was declared dead.
Where do we position Elena Ferrante in light of these historical shifts? On one hand, she has returned to a premodern model, embracing the freedom of anonymity in gender-specific ways that recall Virginia Woolf's views in A Room of One's Own. On the other hand, her writing is very much grounded in this digital age, in which authorship has become a collective yet intensely personal enterprise.
As an "author function" Elena Ferrante marks a new development in the history of women's writing.
Foucault on the author function' from "What is an Author?" (1969)
http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Foucault-AuthorFunction.html
I believe an author is an artist. As an artist an author should have the authority to freely share his or her vision with the world, without the influence of society. I say should because this is not always the case. Many times artists may become influenced by the input of others. For example, if a novel is deemed offensive it may be banned in schools or people may try to convince the author to write about different topics. I believe an author should have complete control over the stories he/she chooses to tell. The author may not have control over how the work is interpreted but an author should always write what he or she wants to write. Elena Ferrante’s decision to remain anonymous allows her to maintain her freedom as an author. By being anonymous, Ferrante can only be judged based on the novels she writes. Ferrante also escapes the pressures that the public can add to writers block. Ferrante can develop her writing at her own pace. I think the American fascination with Ferrante’s identity is a result of a sense of entitlement. Fans or the “non-famous” not only obsess over celebrities and their lives but also feel that these celebrities owe the public. Privacy for authors and other artists are seen as more of a privilege than a right.
ReplyDeleteI thought that the in-class discussions today gave me a fresh perspective on what an author is-- usually I've had extensive background information provided or readily available on most of the authors I've read, even if they've published under a pseudonym. I think Elena Ferrante may be the only truly anonymous author that I've read thus far. However, after actually reading a decent amount of My Brilliant Friend, it becomes apparent that Ferrante is both attached to her work while at the same time trying to distance her true identity as a separate entity from the work. I feel that remaining anonymous but still publishing under a female pseudonym is tremendously noteworthy in its own right, as mentioned in class. It's the exact opposite of what Mary Shelley did with Frankenstein. In previous English courses, we often used the author's life to help us understand or interpret texts. However, it is increasingly apparent that the author can be considered separate from their work, and as discussed in class, acts as a vessel for the story being told.
ReplyDeleteAs for what an author is, an author is a voice-- to some extent both literally and figuratively. We often speak about authors with regard to their "writer's voice", with English professors telling us from our first composition class that they can recognize all of our writer's voices after reading enough of our writing. As per what we discussed in class earlier: when it comes to narration, an author acts as a vessel, medium, or middle-ground between the events in portrayed in the text and the real-world. Every author has a unique writer's voice, which can be used in almost harrowing ways to strip authors of their attempts of anonymity (as per the example today given with J.K. Rowling). Such attempts haven't been able to demystify who Elena Ferrante is, though.
I was drawn to the interviews in various articles on Elena Ferrante, which questioned her about the representation and the style she writes. She states: “the fact remains that I have assumed the right to imprison others in what I seem to see, feel, think, imagine, and know.” It was a rather interesting perspective coming from an anonymous author as we know little about her, besides from her novel, My Brilliant Friend. In one of those interviews, we have Ferrante reflecting on who she is as an author and the subject matters of her novels. Judging from her answers, she takes a lot of pride in what she write and how she depicts as she controls our attention as readers of the events and characters. Yet, it makes her realizes the possible problems that may come with being the author of a popular novel, such as the rise to popularity with her novels. Because of her works and her anonymous nature, it places a lot of speculations and mysteries on finding out who she is and her history, opposing Ferrante’s wishes to remain anonymous. However, by remaining mysterious, Ferrante is presenting herself as a part of the world she created in My Brilliant Friend, as she write about the friendship and rivalry between Lila and Lenu, one of her main focus as to distinguishing certain aspects and issues that arises in the novel. Due to both sides of the spectrum, Ferrante is maintaining her position as an author while illustrating the many viewpoints that are presented in the novel.
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ReplyDeleteTo me personally, the identification of the author doesn’t matter. When reading a book, I do not care if I know the background of the author or their personal hobbies because these things are ambiguous to the characters of the book. What I look for in the book is the imagination of the author and how they use their words to portray the feelings of their such characters. Authors are painters of their books, who stroke by stroke, paint the words on their pages. An author can be the happiest person in the world and yet they write books that have sorrow, grieved, low-spirted characters. That doesn’t mean the author is heart-broken or going through some personal issues upon which they write such books. I think Elena Ferrante is very courageous and valiant to stay anonymous to her readers which gives them freedom and such opportunities for them to imagine the characters however they want to. On the other hand, The author of harry porter series, J.K.Rowling’s, is very active on social media such as twitter. So if a fan is confused or has a question about the setting or characters they can ask her and she answers them as well. However Ferrante, because she is unidentified, her readers have to just imagine the answers to their questions. We as human being, like to label and put a picture to whatever we read. Taking that away from people may seem selfish and to a point of ignorance. However, it should be up to the author if they want to reveal their anonymity or not.
ReplyDeleteAdmittedly, before this class, I had never given much thought to the idea of an author. It seemed simple; an author was a person who wrote a story through their own imagination and skill. I'd heard of authors who in interviews would speak of their characters as real people who could guide them in their writing, and let them know what would be real and authentic to their persona. But that type of thought seemed like an extension of their creativity. It was a testament to the author's imagination that they could feel their characters so deeply as to be able to hear their voice.
ReplyDeleteI'd never heard of the "death of subject," in which the author is a merely just a vessel for the work they produce. This new definition is at odds with my initial thoughts of what constitutes an author. To use a familiar example, within my previous ideas of an author, I would have said J.K. Rowling is someone who had the creativity and skill to weave thousands of pages of a magical society. Instead, with this dissociation of author and work, she becomes someone who discovers this story and writes it for the world to read. The story exists and she is just the transcriber. The story becomes its own separate entity.
My idea of an author is someone who challenges the reader to think outside of what they are used to. The author is someone who as you read, you become only more enticed by what they are saying through their writing. I don’t think of the author as someone who makes the book “whole” instead, as the person or image that we create for the author once the book has been read. The reason for me saying that the real author is what we make of it once we’re done reading is because even when knowing about the history of an author, as a reader we still create an image for the author based on what they have written, making their writing more powerful than what their history is. An author writes for everyone not just a particular crowd because it would then limit the reading to a specific society as opposed to all cultures. Authors should write for the love of creativity that writing brings and challenge the reader to its definitions of the writing. By readers connecting the writing to the author, we are limiting ourselves to only analyzing the link between the writing and its author instead of searching a deeper meaning within the text that we may have missed by trying to make connections. Once there is a detach of the author from the writing, it gives room to make connections between the writing and the world instead of the writing with its author. For instance in Elena Ferrante’s choice to remain anonymous for many reasons will be always be a success. Ferrante creates a different author for all her texts and Ferrante being an anonymous author enables her to keep the writing free because she is not allowing readers to attach her as an author to her writing pieces. For the same reason as I have mentioned that as readers when we have an author we tend to limit the freedom of the writing by exclusively asking questions that attach the writing to its author and the reasoning for the writing. Just as tales and epics have remained alive all these years without having an author, I think Ferrante wants to remain alive through her texts even after her death in which we wouldn’t know when what happens. If we knew who she was as an author, once she were to pass away, if she has written anything before, we will right away assume her writing has to reflect something about death when in reality it may not be at all. Having an author limits the room for creativity for the reader although living in the United States, we tend to want to know the face behind everything that exists which is why that mystery of Ferrante attracts Americans to her writing. Furthermore, it is for that same mystery that Ferrante enables her writing to be so powerful instead of giving the simple pleasures of knowing the face behind the writing.
ReplyDeleteAn author to me is simply put; a voice expressed in text. I always felt that the character's point of view of a story is the authors actual character, views, and experiences, hiding behind the main character of the story. In Elena Ferrante's case, where the author is unknown, the novel almost serve's as a diary. The author is capable of laying their heart on the table with no judgment's to the author themself, though the novel itself will be the only thing in the light of scrutiny or praise. With that being said, for me personally, when I read a novel I never once pictured the author while I read, I do not even read about the author before i read, for the most part. As long as there was a good enough description of the characters physical appearance and personality, I never felt the need to imagine the author at all.
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