L'autofiction italienne, enjeux, frontières, limites

This article discusses the topic of autofiction in Italy trying, through the analysis of particular literary forms that this tradition has produced, to investigate the specificity that it has acquired over the past thirty years. The purpose is to verify issues, boundaries and limits of this narrative practice as a new form of writing in relation to the specific Italian context. Writers who have ventured in a so hazardous narrative form are heterogeneous and sometimes opposite in terms of age, style and ambition, so we can verify the reasons for a choice that, more or less consciously, turns required. By comparing the texts in which an autofictional device is set up, we will point out a common intention to authors: representing the contemporary Italian society and its anthropological mutations. So, it seems that at a certain point this new device, imported from France in a vague and approximate way, was more powerful than conventional narrative forms to understand current Italy. However, from when can we talk about autofiction in Italy? Are there some significant precedents in the novelistic production of the twentieth century? Also, are the liberties taken by writers always needed? In reviewing the proto-autofictional texts of the Italian novelistic tradition of the past thirty years, we will try to show forms and themes specific to the national context, as well as their potential and their limits. The inherent ambiguity of the voice that enounces the story reveals unprecedented potential for Italian writing, but also a dangerous risk. Infact, the author who tell about himself through narrative writing has to be aware that this means not only to change facts but also to reinvent the perception of himself and of the world in which he lives.