Iozzi, Giovanna. 2025. ‘CHOKING BETWEEN REPULSION AND DESIRE’: EXPLORING DISGUST IN ELENA FERRANTE’S CRONACHE DEL MAL D’AMORE.. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]

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Abstract or Description

This creative writing PhD consists of two parts. The first part is a novel, Black Figs, which follows the experiences of a woman called El on holiday in Italy with her husband Tom and their children, Jake and new baby Sol. They are with another couple, long-time friends, Juno and Charlie (with whom El has been secretly infatuated with for years.) El is still recovering from the traumatic birth of Sol, ending up with a C-section, and we find her in a state of bleak anxiety, intense jealousy, as well as being convulsed with disgust at herself, her body, and those around her. Isolated and unravelling mentally, tension builds as El’s skewed gaze and the repellent optics of her surroundings start to overwhelm her and propel her into violent fantasies and actions.

The second part is a critical commentary titled: ‘Choking between repulsion and desire’: exploring disgust in Elena Ferrante’s Cronache del mal d’amore, which explores disgust in the first three books written by Elena Ferrante known as the Cronache del Mal d’Amore. Feverish and disturbing, the short novels, Troubling Love, The Days of Abandonment and The Lost Daughter present intense first-person narrators, isolated and speaking from within the storm of their various crises. Whether they be daughters in mourning, abandoned wives or guilty mothers, they are all plagued by feelings of angry revulsion, at themselves, societal constraints, men, their mothers, their children, at their matrilineages and the Neapolitan dialect. Disgust manifests in various forms and signs forming ugly configurations of the repellent: body fluids, rotting fruit and dead insects. I attempt to show how Ferrante repurposes disgust from its typical associations as a loathed affect, into a more nuanced, expressive emotion, so it becomes a useful clarifying tool for self-examination, allowing her characters a rough passage out of their states of abjection.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.25602/GOLD.00039175
Keywords:	"exploring disgust in Elena Ferrante's work" "disgust" "disgust and desire" "elena ferrante" "the cronache" "Ferrante's early novels" "disgust and the female body" "overcoming disgust" "the allure of disgust" "disgust as female empowerment"
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	English and Comparative Literature
Date:	30 June 2025
Item ID:	39175
Date Deposited:	11 Jul 2025 14:22
Last Modified:	11 Jul 2025 14:25
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/39175

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