The Trauma of Language Learning and Self-Translation in Elena Ferrante and Jhumpa Lahiri

Abstract

Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet (2011–2014) and Jhumpa Lahiri’s first work in Italian, In altre parole (In Other Words, 2015) can both be read as ‘language memoirs’, for they both posit language, language acquisition, and self-translation as central narrative events as well as sites for identity construction and reinvention of the self. In this essay I juxtapose Ferrante’s and Lahiri’s works to argue that both authors explore the traumatic encounter between a repressed or unlearned native/mother tongue and an adoptive language which is also the very language of their texts and the very proof of their linguistic mastery. The essay draws on trauma studies and translation theory to examine the lexical, structural, and thematic dimensions of what I define as ‘dialect trauma’ in Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels and to analyse the recurring rhetoric of linguistic incompetence or what I term ‘language imperfection trauma’ in Lahiri’s In altre parole. I contend that ‘dialect trauma’ in Ferrante’s Quartet manifests as Elena Greco’s recurring metalinguistic glosses which compulsively re-enact Elena’s traumatic memory on the level of her literary language. I then propose that Lahiri’s ‘language imperfection trauma’ can be located in her repeated attempts to pose and pass as Italian, all the while documenting her own language learning practice. My analysis puts in conversation depictions of language acquisition and the exiled or migrant self, representations of trauma, and translingual writing.

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Publication Date

5-28-2024

Publication Title

Romance Studies

Department

Comparative Literature

Additional Department

French and Italian

Document Type

Article

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02639904.2024.2311514

Notes

Special Issue: Comparative Approaches to Elena Ferrante: Traumas, Bodies, Languages

Keywords

Language memoir, Translingual writing, Trauma, Self-translation, Dialect, Elena Ferrante, Jhumpa Lahiri

Language

English

Format

text

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