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Unclaimed Stories: Narrating Sexual Violence and the Traumatized Self in Elena Ferrante and Alice Sebold’s Writings

Wehling-Giorgi, Katrin

Unclaimed Stories: Narrating Sexual Violence and the Traumatized Self in Elena Ferrante and Alice Sebold’s Writings Thumbnail


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Abstract

My paper proposes a comparative reading that explores the links between sexual/gendered violence, trauma and untold experience in the earlier works of Alice Sebold (Lucky, The Lovely Bones) and in a selection of Elena Ferrante’s texts (L’amore molesto and the Neapolitan Novels). Through the lens of trauma theory, I analyze the two authors’ textual and ekphrastic negotiations of the traumatized subject, arguing that the experience of sexual abuse lies at the origin of their complex conceptualizations of femininity as well as often acting as a catalyst of aesthetic expression. Moreover, by showing how Sebold and Ferrante employ elements of magical realism to explore and articulate precisely those silenced spaces and gaps of experience, I argue that their works provide powerful examples of how female-authored texts resist master narratives.

Citation

Wehling-Giorgi, K. (2021). Unclaimed Stories: Narrating Sexual Violence and the Traumatized Self in Elena Ferrante and Alice Sebold’s Writings. Modern Language Notes, 136(1), 118-142. https://doi.org/10.1353/mln.2021.0007

Journal Article Type Article
Online Publication Date Jun 4, 2021
Publication Date 2021-01
Deposit Date Oct 5, 2020
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Modern Language Notes
Print ISSN 0149-6611
Electronic ISSN 1080-6598
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 136
Issue 1
Pages 118-142
DOI https://doi.org/10.1353/mln.2021.0007
Related Public URLs https://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/mln/special-issues

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