Original scientific paper
Personal and Collective Myths in E. Bettize’s "Egzile"
Katarina Dalmatin
orcid.org/0000-0002-3486-9578
; University of Split, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Abstract
Narrative strategies used in the demystifi cation of defi nite collective myths present in Enzo Bettiza’s Egzil are analysed in this paper. The building of individual and collective identities in this work are set through the subtle unveiling and interlacing of personal and collective myths. Therefore, the need arises to base the analyses of Egzil on the theoretical precepts of radical autobiographies which present a specific interspace between autobiographical and historiographical discourse. Namely, the narrator of Egzil continually immerses the narration of particular events from Dalmatian history into the story of his own existence. At the same time, he inscribes the story of his own life in the discourse of the possibilities of narrating history in general terms. However, although he successfully discloses the subconscious libidinal bases of romantic and fascist myths on Italy as well as communist myths, he contrives to substitute them only by personal interpretations of psychoanalytic myths and private and «family» ones, without more serious pretensions on their definitive historical judgement. Egzil thus confirms the thesis according to which the practice of radical autobiographies can never overcome the myth.
Keywords
Bettiza; Egzil; collective myths; personal myths; psychoanalytical myths; radical autobiography
Hrčak ID:
136138
URI
Publication date:
11.2.2008.
Visits: 1.388 *