This book originated in an email from Professor Costantino Marmo, director of the Centro Internazionale di Studi Umanistici Umberto Eco. It read, in part:
I like to think that the autumn of 2020 would be the ideal time for Elena Ferrante to give three lectures at the University of Bologna, on three successive days, open to the entire city. These lectures would discuss her work as a writer, her poetics, her narrative technique, or anything else she wants, and would ideally be of interest to a broad, non-specialist audience.
The Eco Lectures belong to a tradition of lectures given by figures from the national and international world of culture which Umberto Eco, then director of the Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici, decided to offer the university and the city of Bologna in the early years of this century. The first series was given by Elie Wiesel (in January of 2000), the most recent by Orhan Pamuk (in the spring of 2014).
Then came the pandemic and the lockdowns, and public events were impossible. In the meantime, however, Ferrante, having accepted the invitation, had written the three lectures. And so in November of 2021 the actress Manuela Mandracchia, in the guise of Elena Ferrante, presented the lectures at the Teatro Arena del Sole in Bologna, together with ERT, Emilia Romagna Teatro.
The author’s exploration of reading and writing continues here with Dante’s Rib, an essay composed at the invitation of the ADI, the Association of Italianists, under the auspices of Professor Alberto Casadei and the president of the ADI, Gino Ruozzi. The essay concluded the conference Dante and Other Classics (April 29, 2021), where it was read by the scholar and critic Tiziana de Rogatis.
Sandra Ozzola