The ‘Ferrante phenomenon’ in China: Circulation and reception of the “Neapolitan Novels” and “My Brilliant Friend”

From the perspective of comparative and world literature, the global curiosity for Italian author Elena Ferrante’s “Neapolitan Novels” tetralogy has been described based on a four-element framework: Naples; a new female identity; the long narrative; and the memoir-style extended autobiography. This paper measures the applicability of the first two elements to the circulation and reception of Ferrante’s four-book series and the tetralogy-inspired TV series “My Brilliant Friend” (Seasons 1 and 2) in the People’s Republic of China. Firstly, considering Italian and Chinese cultural policies, the study describes the main factors participating in their distribution in the Chinese context. Secondly, it draws a connection between circulation and reception by examining the audiences’ and critics’ discourses generated therein around the editorial and audiovisual products. Specifically, the qualitative mixed method design integrates corpus analysis tools into the exploration of content analysis data to examine posts drawn from a select sample of social networks and newspaper and magazine articles. The findings confirm the validity of Naples and a new female identity as elements playing a considerable role in the success obtained by the “Neapolitan Novels” and “My Brilliant Friend” in China but add to the framework the emphasis on the cross-media and transnational nature of the products, the contribution of their international fame, and the mystery built globally around Elena Ferrante.