Biofiction, Documentality and the Internet: metamorphoses of a Literary Genre

Biofiction is a “palimpsest”, a story that someone has re-written on the basis of a true (or at least possible) biography. When we read such a text we generally assume that the narrated facts (and thoughts) are true, or at least likely, plausible, in spite of the fictional presentation of them, but after postmodernism, the distinction between referentiality and fictionality has become more problematic. Over the last 15 years, nevertheless, a new generation of Italian writers seems to handle the problem of referentiality much more carefully than postmodern authors, and in the hypermodernist biofiction the role of the “mechanic reader” seems to be extremely important.