@article{Schwartz_2020, title={Very Queer Friends: Alba de Céspedes’ Dalla parte di lei and Elena Ferrante’s La vita bugiarda degli adulti}, url={https://www.altrelettere.uzh.ch/article/view/al_uzh-45}, DOI={10.5903/al_uzh-45}, abstractNote={<p>ABSTRACT:</p> <p>Elena Ferrante has long acknowledged the influence of Alba de Céspedes’ 1949 novel <em>Dalla parte di lei </em>on her writing, particularly in terms of conceiving female characters. In Ferrante’s newest novel, <em>La vita bugiarda degli adulti</em>, the prominent theme of queer friendship between young women echoes and reconfigures elements from <em>Dalla parte di lei</em>. This article delves into the capacious queer relationality depicted in both novels, tracing the presence of transmasculinity and feminist re-writing as key elements in both. Situating the two novels’ representations of women’s intimacy in their socio-literary contexts, I analyze the ways in which they utilize models like the «fiamma», romantic friendship, sisterhood, and female husbands. Neither author identifies as lesbian or queer; thus my close reading of the frankly sexual and deeply romantic scenes between female characters seeks not to assign the writers or their books to a category, but rather to elaborate the queer dimensions of relationality that they explore. Ultimately, I propose that a significant part of what makes these queer, lesbian, and transmasculine representations possible is a shared feminist project of reading, writing, and rewriting from one’s own perspective: <em>dalla parte di lei</em>. In this sense, what Ferrante’s narrator-protagonist Giovanna owes to de Céspedes’ narrator-protagonist Alessandra is not only the possibility of a queer life and a feminist voice, but the potential for narrating queer feminist experience <em>as </em>relational.</p>}, journal={altrelettere}, author={Schwartz, Selby}, year={2020}, month={feb.}, pages={1–23} }