Lists and narrative construction: Gesualdo Bufalino's challenge

Abstract

This essay studies Bufalino’s narrative work from the focal point of the theory and poetics of the list. In the five major novels – Diceria dell’untore, Argo il cieco ovvero i sogni della memoria, Le menzogne della notte, Qui pro quo and Tommaso e il fotografo cieco ovvero Il Patatràc – a modus scribendi emerges, obsessive and structural: to think the work from words arranged in lists. Of this way of proceeding, that invests the text and the paratext, an attempt is made here to understand its functioning and literary meaning.