Novel Lives

Following an introduction to the theory of autobiographical rhetoric, this study centers on the process of fictionalizing the self in Cabrera Infante's La Habana para un infant difunto and Vargas Llosa's La tia Julia y el escribidor. Rosemary Feal examines narrative devices that the self-conscious protagonists employ to translate life into text and shows how they create mock autobiographies. The analysis of the autobiographical mode encompasses related forms of storytelling including the picaresque, the cinema, soap operas, and erotica, and it also touches on other works by these authors.