Narcissus confesses`
Narcissus confesses

Summary/Abstract: Our main concern has been to outline, in its fundamental aspects, the system of the idea of confession, its repertoire of features. From its fundamental claim to truth derives a series of characteristics, i.e. sincerity, authenticity, etc., which although originally moral conditions, have to be understood as aesthetic dimensions of confession, which translate into a particular manner of modeling the text. The generic repertoires are not endlessly renewable. A number of thematic, modal and formal determinations, relatively constant and trans-historical (relative because generic facts blend, at any moment, in diverse proportions, aspects of culture and nature) fashion the space which the evolution of confession inscribes, and within which it makes its choices. They are structural invariants connected to an inner logic which manifests through certain directions of evolution, to which confession, in its historical development, gives substance, i.e. the central problem of truth, although its content varies in time and space. Confession seems to be particularly sensitive to ‘dominant discourses’, either religious, psychoanalytical, philosophic, or linguistic. To make the catalogue of traits practical, we had to give up going into too specious details. Instead, we have been more interested in the way the elements of the system of confession articulate than in their presentation. Further detailing would have made the model proposed unworkable. Our desire has been to reach a balanced yet comprehensive solution, theoretically sound and practically feasible. We have focused more on the conditions, metaphysical, social, aesthetic, cultural, etc., that make the truth of confession possible, and underlined the experiential character of the genre.

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