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Elena Ferrante is Italy’s most acclaimed contemporary novelist, although her true identity remains unknown. Having been translated into multiple languages and published in 39 countries, with over a million of copies sold in the United States alone, her ‘Neapolitan Quartet’ triggered what has been called “Ferrante Fever.” This course investigates the reasons behind this global, literary phenomenon while exploring themes such as female subjectivity and the interplay with space and society, the question of female authorship, women’s participation in, or exclusion from, history, and the internal violence of a rapidly changing society. We shall read Ferrante’s entire oeuvre: Troubling Love (1999) The Days of the Abandonment (2002), and The Lost Daughter (2006), the Neapolitan Quartet (2012-2014), as well the collection of letters and essays Frantumaglia. (2016). Theoretical readings will include essays by Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Steve Pile, and others.