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A Problem of Middlebrow Style: Dialect and Translation in Elena Ferrante’s Naples Tetralogy

Richard Robinson Orcid Logo

Textual Practice, Volume: 36, Issue: 4, Pages: 582 - 604

Swansea University Author: Richard Robinson Orcid Logo

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DOI (Published version): 10.1080/0950236x.2022.2030514

Abstract

In what ways does the Bakhtinian model of novelistic discourse, in which dialects are conceived as styles and styles as dialects, apply in the age of world literature and world English? If the style of the contemporary world-novel is purposely drained of its heteroglossia, it risks complicity with a...

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Published in: Textual Practice
ISSN: 0950-236X 1470-1308
Published: Informa UK Limited 2022
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URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa59154
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spelling 2022-04-19T15:10:55.6331667 v2 59154 2022-01-11 A Problem of Middlebrow Style: Dialect and Translation in Elena Ferrante’s Naples Tetralogy dd0360f678f81621c96a94dae0e1c2b3 0000-0003-2097-1931 Richard Robinson Richard Robinson true false 2022-01-11 AELC In what ways does the Bakhtinian model of novelistic discourse, in which dialects are conceived as styles and styles as dialects, apply in the age of world literature and world English? If the style of the contemporary world-novel is purposely drained of its heteroglossia, it risks complicity with a frictionless communicability. This essay argues that the near-complete absence of napoletano in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, despite its magmatically latent energy, emphasises a refusal both to utter and be uttered by dialectal delinquency. The narrator says after Bakhtin ‘“I am me” in someone else’s language, and in [her] own language, “I am other”’, but without any relish in dialogism. Canonical writers such as Verga, Svevo, Pasolini and Ginzburg also respond to the extraordinary rapidity with which dialects were largely subsumed by spoken as well as written Italian. Yet Ferrante prompts new questions about how the global cultures of reception are gendered. She resists the narcissistically masculinist performance of a named style, implicitly and pseudonymously writing for the majority female readership. Ferrante embraces the gendered sensibility of the primarily female ‘middlebrow’, a category now conceived without stigma as immersive, pleasure-giving, cognitively complex and generically transgressive. Under such conditions, the questione linguistica is repeatedly confronted in narrative: its evasion in language marks both the constraints and possibilities of pan-feminist translatability in the ‘world lit’ economy. Journal Article Textual Practice 36 4 582 604 Informa UK Limited 0950-236X 1470-1308 dialect; middlebrow; style; translation; Ferrante; world literature 3 4 2022 2022-04-03 10.1080/0950236x.2022.2030514 COLLEGE NANME English Literature COLLEGE CODE AELC Swansea University SU Library paid the OA fee (TA Institutional Deal) 2022-04-19T15:10:55.6331667 2022-01-11T17:13:05.5446394 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences School of Culture and Communication - English Literature, Creative Writing Richard Robinson 0000-0003-2097-1931 1 59154__23885__807d9afaca934ca1aad405bcee80c323.pdf 59154.pdf 2022-04-19T15:09:42.9346719 Output 1871964 application/pdf Version of Record true © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. true eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
title A Problem of Middlebrow Style: Dialect and Translation in Elena Ferrante’s Naples Tetralogy
spellingShingle A Problem of Middlebrow Style: Dialect and Translation in Elena Ferrante’s Naples Tetralogy
Richard Robinson
title_short A Problem of Middlebrow Style: Dialect and Translation in Elena Ferrante’s Naples Tetralogy
title_full A Problem of Middlebrow Style: Dialect and Translation in Elena Ferrante’s Naples Tetralogy
title_fullStr A Problem of Middlebrow Style: Dialect and Translation in Elena Ferrante’s Naples Tetralogy
title_full_unstemmed A Problem of Middlebrow Style: Dialect and Translation in Elena Ferrante’s Naples Tetralogy
title_sort A Problem of Middlebrow Style: Dialect and Translation in Elena Ferrante’s Naples Tetralogy
author_id_str_mv dd0360f678f81621c96a94dae0e1c2b3
author_id_fullname_str_mv dd0360f678f81621c96a94dae0e1c2b3_***_Richard Robinson
author Richard Robinson
author2 Richard Robinson
format Journal article
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container_issue 4
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institution Swansea University
issn 0950-236X
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description In what ways does the Bakhtinian model of novelistic discourse, in which dialects are conceived as styles and styles as dialects, apply in the age of world literature and world English? If the style of the contemporary world-novel is purposely drained of its heteroglossia, it risks complicity with a frictionless communicability. This essay argues that the near-complete absence of napoletano in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, despite its magmatically latent energy, emphasises a refusal both to utter and be uttered by dialectal delinquency. The narrator says after Bakhtin ‘“I am me” in someone else’s language, and in [her] own language, “I am other”’, but without any relish in dialogism. Canonical writers such as Verga, Svevo, Pasolini and Ginzburg also respond to the extraordinary rapidity with which dialects were largely subsumed by spoken as well as written Italian. Yet Ferrante prompts new questions about how the global cultures of reception are gendered. She resists the narcissistically masculinist performance of a named style, implicitly and pseudonymously writing for the majority female readership. Ferrante embraces the gendered sensibility of the primarily female ‘middlebrow’, a category now conceived without stigma as immersive, pleasure-giving, cognitively complex and generically transgressive. Under such conditions, the questione linguistica is repeatedly confronted in narrative: its evasion in language marks both the constraints and possibilities of pan-feminist translatability in the ‘world lit’ economy.
published_date 2022-04-03T04:16:14Z
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