A Narrative Study Of Elena Ferrante’s “Neapolitan Tetralogy”

Elena Ferrante(1943-),an anonymous contemporary Italian writer,has become one of the most popular Italian writers in recent years because of her “Neapolitan Tetralogy”.The success of this series is closely related to its unique narrative.This thesis aims to study the narration of Elena Ferrante’s “Neapolitan Tetralogy”,which is mainly divided into the following parts.The first part is an introduction,which introduces Elena Ferrante and her writing experience.By sorting out the current situation of research at home and abroad,the existing researches on Elena Ferrante and the “Neapolitan Tetralogy” are found to be inadequate in the narrative research of this series,which establishes the starting point of this paper.The second part is the body,including four chapters.The first chapter tries to construct the image of Ferrante from the concept of “implied author” in narratology,and discusses the effect of Ferrante’s anonymity on the narrative of her novels.Chapter two analyzes the narrative time in the “Neapolitan Tetralogy”.Firstly,the narration time and narrated time in the novel are sorted out,and the significance of these times is briefly analyzed.Secondly,how Ferrante narrates the events of the past60 years through time distortion is discussed.Chapter three discusses the narrative perspective of “Neapolitan Tetralogy”.As a retrospective first-person narrative work,Ferrante flexibly uses the dual focus of narrative self and empirical self.In addition,the series has the phenomenon of perspective transgression,often intruding into the omniscient perspective,so as to reveal the story to the maximum extent.Chapter four discusses the narrative voice of “Neapolitan Tetralogy” from the perspective of feminist narratology.This series combines the narrative voice of personal,authorial and communal,thus excellently conveying the voice of the female community.The third part is the conclusion.Elena Ferrante’s “Neapolitan Tetralogy” is a successful case of first-person retrospective narration and provides a model for the study of feminist narratology.