Specular Autofiction As Playful Fiction in Lluvia By Victoria de Stefano: A Mirrors Game

Abstract

Victoria de Stefano writes a type of self-referential literature. In the structure of her novels, she makes an explicit reflection on the complex relationship that exists between reality and fiction. By doing this, she produces a double effect. On the one hand, she underlines the artificiality of the text. On the other, she questions the limits of fiction. In other words, most of her literature falls into the category of metafiction and, as Guyard points out, "metafictional theorists insist on the fact - undoubted, on the other hand - that the metafictional text questions the limits between the real and the fictional” (2012: 59-60). Lluvia (2006) gathers the elements mentioned above to produce an autofictional text that is highly self-referential and specular. Starting from this premise, it can be affirmed that the work in question proposes a game to the reader, makes him an accomplice of literary creation. It creates an unsolvable paradox that is at the core of the fiction's reflexivity. This study will analyze the functioning of this structure and its relationship with what we could call playful fiction (Robert Detweiler), a literary mode that makes the reader an accomplice by revealing the artifice of the text. The central objective will be to analyze how this literary game defines Stefano's novel, which can be studied from the notion of "specular autofiction", and serves to accentuate its central theme, literary creation, not only by exposing it in the diegesis but by doing that the reader participates indirectly in it.