Narrar o labirinto

identidades à margem na Tetralogia Napolitana, de Ferrante

Abstract

This article analyzes the identity construction of the two female protagonists in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Tetralogy, in the light of a phenomenological and feminist perspective. As a starting point, the concept of space developed by Bachelard (1978), who thinks of space as an experience of the human, was used to reflect on the recognition of the two characters in the space of origin. From the reading of the Italian philosopher Adriana Cavarero (1997), an attempt was made to draw a parallel between the concrete narration experience of the narrator-character Lenù and the subjective narrative experience, put into action, by Lila. Considering the concepts of unity and uniqueness of being proposed by Cavarero, the proposal was to link the identity construction of the protagonists to the narrative unity of the space built by the text, in order to conceive the volumes of the work as a metanarrative. If the concept of identity is a construction of language (SILVA, 2014), the discourses about the city and the protagonists are intertwined to the point of influencing the recognition of the characters as Neapolitan citizens, as well as interfering in the positions that the subjects assume in the world – inside or outside the novels.