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Volume 29, Issue 2
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Abstract

Abstract

Using Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels as case study, this article presents a cognitive approach to fictionality and authorial intention using Text World Theory and Mind-Modelling. It investigates two forms of ontological distortion: readers’ (mis)classification of the novels’ genre (as autofiction or autobiography) and the problem posed by the author’s pseudonymic identity. The analysis has three parts: first, I conduct a Text World analysis of the novels’ syntactic/stylistic similarities to autobiography and, in doing so, reveal its ontological structure; second, I consider the ontological liminality of narration and the ways in which readers build an authorial mind-model of Ferrante; thirdly, I explore the assessment of critics and/as readers of the text’s fictionality and the impact of Ferrante’s pseudonym on perceptions of authorial intentionality and the authorial mind-model. Ultimately, I argue that a cognitive approach offers greatest insight into readers’ interpretations of authors and of fictionality.

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2019-10-16
2023-09-27

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The “dissolving margins” of Elena Ferrante and the Neapolitan novels
Narrative Inquiry 29, 391 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.19017.gib
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): author; authorial intentionality; autofiction; cognitive narratology; cognitive stylistics; Elena Ferrante; fictionality; mind-modelling; pseudonym; Text World Theory

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