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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Illusion et désenchantement: le récit unique d'Elsa Morante in Dérision et démythification dans la culture italienne (p.219-235), Publications de l'Université de Saint-Etienne, 2003, 276p., ISBN 2-86272-276-6

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The author of this article intends to analyse the role of fiction in Elsa Morante’s literary work. On the basis of a judgement made by Lukacs in an interview to the weekly Rinascita, the author studies how Morante reveals the poisonous effects of the fictions invented by her characters who, intoxicated by their own imagination, are in the end disillusioned and confronted with their vulnerability. Examining a few short stories included in Lo scialle andaluso the author tries to find out a typical narrative scheme common to most short stories and novels written by Elsa Morante. The fictions created by the characters are narrated in such a way that they appear delusive and spurious. Hence an ambiguity of Morante’s style which combines seductiveness and deceit. Although she denounces the clichés of the nineteenth century popular literature, she never wrote realistic novels. In La Storia, historic events are mainly described in the paratexts which open each chapter and the changing circumstances of the war interfere only marginally with the secluded life of the immature characters which are the protagonists of the fiction.