OLGA’S JOURNEY TO HELL AND BACK: ECHOES OF DANTE’S COMMEDIA IN ELENA FERRANTE’S I GIORNI DELL’ABBANDONO.

This paper analyzes Elena Ferrante’s I giorni dell’abbandono (2002) as an infernal journey. The protagonist Olga moves from the dependency and timidity of her role as wife and mother to a position that Ferrante herself calls sorveglianza, i.e., vigilance. Arguably, this word is a gendered term in Ferrante. There exists a masculine—repressive— vigilance and a sorveglianza that is made of the desire to be awake and aware. In order to become vigilant, Olga needs to reach the bottom of abandonment before starting her voyage back. The fall and difficult ascent toward a regenerated self is not new in the Western literary canon, but this tradition denies a final regeneration to the figure of the abandoned woman. My analysis of the imagery and the language of the novel highlights the influence from Dante’s Commedia, especially from Inferno, on Ferrante’s work. I also seek, as a second goal, to consider the question of atonement and salvation in Ferrante by addressing the absence of a Virgil-like figure in her novel. Besides textual echoes of Dante’s Commedia on several levels (imagery, emotions, atmosphere, and lexicon) the most compelling parallel concerns the authoritative transformations achieved by Dante and Ferrante. Both poet and writer invent a “new “literature” based on the profound reworking of inherited models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]