Dear All,

Thank you for another great discussion today. For Irini and Christopher: we discussed this article by translator Jenny McPhee in relation to The Story if a New Name. We interpreted the name as monetary status, identity and loss thereof. We discussed the symbolism of the dolls in these novels and in other novels by Ferrante (The Lost Daughter and The Beach at Night). We clarified the structure of the first two volumes and we talked about female protagonists that survive (like Lenù and Olga, in The Days of Abandonment) in contrast to those that perish after abandonment (Dido) or go crazy (Melina and “la poverella”). I suggest that you reach out to somebody who took notes.

We talked about the presentations. You will find a description of what we are going to do under the assignments tab. As I said in class,  my impression is that we need to narrow the scope of those presentations about friendship. What is the specific aspect of friendship you want to discuss? Remember that the presentation is not a summary of the plot, but a critical reading supported by a theoretical lens. Your presentation should state your idea and say why it is important. You have to make references to two points in the volumes read so far and refer to at least one secondary source (either read in class or new).

I realized that some of you might not be familiar with how to conduct a research. Please come to the tutoring session, go and see a librarian with your assignment or go to the writing center. These people are there for you. Make an appointment with me if you would rather work with me at a different time.

Finally, here is the assignment for next week: along with the assigned portion of The Story of a New Name, read the blog post by Christopher Warley (follow the link under course material). For your blog posts consider looking for run-on sentences (as described by Warley) or engaging with the topics of his post (speed of narration). In alternative, you might want to discuss something totally new, that we haven’t analyzed in class. For example: why the shoes?

Look forward to reading all your posts. Please try to post on time and if you are writing the meta-post, try to wait until Tuesday so that you have hopefully all of the posts published.

See you next week.

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