Abstract

This comparative reading of the adaptations of Elena Ferrante’s L’amore molesto and L’amica geniale queries the occupation of textual «verbal space» through audiovisual means that call attention to the significant connection between these two works and their literary antecedents. Millicent Marcus has talked about literary adaptations as visual texts marked by the presence of «umbilical scenes» that evidenced «the relationship between parent text and the filmic offspring». The importance of such umbilical scenes stems from their foregrounding of the very image of reading as a central trope guiding an inevitable process of mise-en-abîme.