opinions as counting more than objetive facts. However, how critics have pointed out, "the identity emerging from that dialogue with a 'necessary other'—Sterne’s reader, who is addressed directly from every corner of the novel—is elusive and domineering. While the narrator invokes the need for reciprocity, the reader ends up being trapped in a narrative time ruled by digressions and procrastination." She opposes to this Gertrude Stein's The Autobriography of Alice B. Toklas, which, in spite of its name, was written by Stein herself. A real person, who was also typing the book as Stein dictated it, becomes this way the "necessary other". Ferrante writes about how women have been erased from culture, claiming that writers feel obliged to read the cannon writers, who are majoritaly male, while many cultures men have not read Elsa Morante, Natalia Ginzburg, Anna Maria Ortese, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, or Virginia Woolf. She encourages women to identify other women writers to form their History, using the poetry of Emily Dickinson to frame the idea. She claims that reproducing this is important not only on a cultural level, but on a political one. “Dante’s Rib.” The final essay, composed for a different seminar in Florence, is an appreciation of Dante Alighieri, and, more especifically, of his muse, Beatrice. This continues the theme of literature as conversation. According to Ferrante, Beatrice is Dante's sublime invention as the progenitor of a new hierarchy of women endowed with “intelletto,” able to understand the poet's praise and not just silent objects to be admired. Indeed, in the Commedia, Dante allows Beatrice to “emerge from her muteness” and speak “like a man and perhaps better.” Reception The book was well received by the critic, seen widely as a peak inside the writer's mind. As Molly Young writes for The New York Times, the book is "a philosophical monograph on the nature of writing" and also "a practical manual." Bibliography . References 2021 non-fiction books Books by Elena Ferrante Edizioni E/O books