Jorge Luis Borges in the Work of Leonardo Sciascia
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This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Rewriting the Limits between History and Fiction: Jorge Luis Borges in the Work of Leonardo Sciascia Clara Martínez Nistal PhD Comparative Literature 2017 Declaration This is to certify that that the work contained within has been composed by me and is entirely my own work. No part of this thesis has been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification. Signed: Clara Martínez Nistal 2 Contents Abstract................................................................................................................................. 5 Note on primary texts, translations and abbreviations ........................................................... 6 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................. 10 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................ 11 1. Politics and literature ................................................................................................... 14 2. History and literature ................................................................................................... 20 3. Methodology ................................................................................................................ 23 4. Project outline .............................................................................................................. 29 CHAPTER 1. The Detective Story and the Search for Truth................................................ 35 1. Sciascia on the detective story .................................................................................... 37 2. Borges on the detective story ...................................................................................... 38 3. The detective fiction genre ........................................................................................... 40 4. Borges’s detective fiction ............................................................................................. 44 5. Sciascia’s detective fiction ........................................................................................... 50 5.1. Detective fiction and mafia .................................................................................... 52 5.2. Detective fiction and universal mafia ..................................................................... 57 6. Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 69 CHAPTER 2. L’affaire Moro and Borges: Circularity between Literature and Life ................ 72 1. Historical context: the Moro case ................................................................................. 73 2. The inchiesta form ....................................................................................................... 74 3. L’affaire Moro and Pierre Menard: a methodology for reading ..................................... 79 4. L’affaire Moro and Herbert Quain: an invitation for the perspicacious reader ............... 87 5. The historian and the detective: fiction and narrative history ........................................ 89 6. Sciascia’s Aldo Moro and Unamuno’s Don Quijote ...................................................... 95 7. L’affaire Moro and Tema del traidor y del héroe: literature prefiguring reality ............. 103 8. Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 108 CHAPTER 3. Il teatro della memoria and Borges: Memory and the Mutability of History ... 110 1. The art of memory ..................................................................................................... 112 2. Il teatro della memoria and Funes el memorioso: language and memory .................. 118 3. Memory and identity .................................................................................................. 123 4. Identity and authorship .............................................................................................. 127 5. Willingness to believe and the willing suspension of disbelief .................................... 130 6. Il teatro della memoria and La busca de Averroes: life as imitation of art ................... 134 7. Il teatro della memoria, Tema del traidor y del héroe and L’affaire Moro .................... 137 8. Collective memory and history ................................................................................... 139 3 9. Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 144 CHAPTER 4. Literature Taking the Place of History: Il Consiglio d’Egitto as Historiographic Metafiction ........................................................................................................................ 146 1. The past as a space for fiction ................................................................................... 148 2. Il Consiglio d’Egitto and Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius .................................................... 152 3. Literature as mirror .................................................................................................... 157 4. Mise en abyme .......................................................................................................... 161 5. The historical novel .................................................................................................... 164 6. Il Consiglio d’Egitto as historiographic metafiction ..................................................... 169 7. Three versions of Vella .............................................................................................. 172 8. Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 177 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................. 180 WORKS CITED ................................................................................................................. 188 4 Abstract This thesis examines the preoccupation with the relationship between history and fiction present in the work of Leonardo Sciascia and Jorge Luis Borges. By means of different narrative strategies, both authors underscore the narrative elements that underpin any reconstruction of the past, and in this way they link the process of reconstruction of past events to the process of rewriting of a literary work. They emphasise, however, that whereas the literary work can be enriched by multiple rewritings, multiple reconstructions of the same real past event risk threatening its truthfulness. This thesis investigates the different ways in which Borges’s and Sciascia’s works intersect, across three narrative forms: the detective story, the historical essay (inchiesta or ‘enquiry’ for Sciascia) and the historical fiction. The analysis of Sciascia’s texts starts from a focus on the structural similarities with the work of Borges in the detective story, paying particular attention to Il contesto (1971), Todo modo (1974), and Il cavaliere e la morte (1988). It then moves on to Sciascia’s inclusion of fragments of Borges’s texts in two of his inchieste, L’affaire Moro (1978) and Il teatro della memoria (1981). The last chapter of the thesis proposes a metafictional reading of Sciascia’s historical novel Il Consiglio d’Egitto (1963), in the light of the comparisons with Borges’s work undertaken in the previous chapters. The two key aims of this thesis are to show (1) that studying the ways in which Sciascia integrates Borges’s texts in his own writing allows a deeper understanding of Sciascia’s texts, but also underscores traits in Borges’s which might have been downplayed by previous criticism of his work, and (2) that reconsidering in the light of this understanding a number of Sciascia’s other texts where Borges’s influence is not explicit allows us to identify a preoccupation with regards to the relationship between history and fiction shared between both authors. 5 Note on primary texts, translations and abbreviations References to primary texts All titles for Sciascia’s and Borges’s works will appear italicised in the body of the text for consistency’s sake, instead of being formatted differently depending on whether they have been published as books, articles, part of an anthology, etc. For ease of reference, publication dates and English translations for all of Sciascia’s and Borges’s works cited in this thesis are listed below, instead of in the main text of the thesis. Sciascia’s originals will be quoted from Paolo Squillacioti’s