Lisbon, Oneiric City in Antonio Tabucchi's Requiem

Abstract

Antonio Tabucchi's nouvelle Requiem: A Hallucination is a tribute to Portugal in which Tabucchi resignifies Lisbon by enhancing polisensoriality and an oneiric state. The city is reconstructed and becomes of vital importance for the protagonist, who undertakes an intimate journey in order to fill the gaps of his life, scattered and fragmented as the portrayal of the places he visits. All of them convey the postmodern way of life often problematized by the author in his works. In order to examine the reconstruction of space carried out by the Italian author's nouvelle, we will recur to some hypotheses from Tuan's Topophilia, Westphal's Geocriticism and García Canclini's Urban Anthropology. The final aim is to evaluate how the description of the city in Requiem... becomes the start point to reflect on issues such as the passing of time, life and death.