Il libro fittizio: storia e funzioni di un espediente letterario

The article deals with the topos of fictional books that only exist inside others books. Firstly, a theoretical study about fictional books is presented, such as the ones by Max Beerbohm and by Lyon Sprague de Camp. Then, we focus on the function of fictional books in some authors from the early modern to the contemporary age. The first two trends are the satirical one, from François Rabelais’ Pantagruel, and the invention of the sources in Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quijote. During the twentieth century, fictional books acquire more and more functions. We will analyze the cases of Jorge Luis Borges, who uses the fictional book in order to create fantastic worlds, and that of Italo Calvino, who uses books inside books as a metaliterary tool in the novel Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore (1979). These and other examples will be analyzed with the aim of understanding the reasons for the great numbers of fictional books over the centuries.