Fictionalizing Acts in Writers' Diaries: an Analysis of Hawthorne's American Notebooks

Can private journals be read as fictional texts? What are the limits between the literary and the non-literary in writers' diaristic productions? These are some of the questions which Fictionalizing Acts in Writers' Diaries address. In this work, Geraldo M. Cáffaro carries out an analysis of some of Hawthorne's earliest personal writings, in order to show that there may be a fictional dimension in the so-called referential texts. By drawing on concepts from Wolfgang Iser's literary anthropology, Cáffaro invites a revaluation of categories such as the real and the fictive in relation to private journals, while showing parallels between Hawthorne's style, Picturesque, Romantic and Transcendentalist conventions. The result constitutes an opportunity to know a rather neglected side of Hawthorne's literary personality. Most importantly,it is a contribution to an emerging field of studies which has attracted authors such as Philippe Lejeune and Maurice Blanchot.