Sgretolatura di modelli letterari in L’amica geniale di Elena Ferrante e in The Bluest Eye di Toni Morrison

In accordance with Simone De Beauvoir’s thought that one is not born but becomes a woman, Lila and Lenù’s story in Elena Ferrante’s saga My Brilliant Friend (2011) offers a gendered idea of Bildungsroman, on the margins of post-World War II Naples, quite similar to that of pre-World-War II Ohio in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970). While some critics have found similarities between Lila’s defiance of patriarchal society and Sula’s (from Morrison’s eponymous 1973 novel), it is the depiction of the marginalization from mainstream culture and privileges of Pecola Breedlove and the MacTeer sisters and the incomprehension of the world and logic of adults that bear striking resemblances to Lila and Lenù’s story. Ferrante’s concept of “smarginatura” can be found in the structure of Morrison’s novel that dismantles the middle-class blissful existence offered by Dick and Jane basal readers, totally incongruous with the reality of black protagonists. In both novels, archetypal literary models are dismantled to illustrate a reality that cannot fit in them.