ShodhPatra: International Journal of Science and Humanities

Narrative Retaliation and Reminiscence Analysed through the Lens of Gerard Genette’s Narrative Discourse in Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend

This paper analyses the narrative and temporal distortions present in Elena Ferrante’s seminal novel, My Brilliant Friend. Set amidst the backdrop of post-war 1950s Naples, the novel is a female bildungsroman based on the obsessive and tumultuous friendship and relationship that both central protagonists, Lila and Elena, experience from childhood, through the formative years of their adolescence till adulthood. Recounted from the perspective of Lenu, the novel offers a glimpse into both their lives and displays the inner turmoil and external challenges that both the girls face growing up amidst the violent, and socio-political upheavals of that era. This paper employs Gerard Genette’s framework of Narrative Discourse as a critical theoretical gap by examining the novel through the three main categories of Order, Duration and Frequency. These narrative strategies such as order disrupt childhood memories to maintain control over narration, duration summarises individual memories that are compressed to short instances for Elena, and time expands when Elena is with Lila. While violent descriptions of the narrative background are employed as reiterative frequencies. Ferrante uses these structural distortions to present a biased retelling of a childhood not just to collect neutral and nostalgic memories, but as a narrative strategy for Elena to capture the mysterious Lila through her words and to gain control over the narrative of their lives and of her recollection.