ABSTRACT
Vincenzo Consolo's Sicilian origins are important for an understanding of his work which draws heavily on the island's historical and literary heritage. Il sorriso dell'ignoto marinaio, Consolo's first historical novel, follows a long Sicilian precedent by taking as its temporal setting the Risorgimento. In Il sorriso dell'ignoto marinaio, the debate on political commitment and the writing of history is one which develops over the course of the novel. In Il sorriso dell'ignoto marinaio, Consolo effects a shift from a power-history association to a power-language association by establishing illiteracy as a symptom of exclusion from power and from historical writing. The totality and cohesion of illusionist narration is undone in Il sorriso dell'ignoto marinaio by the plurality of linguistic forms in the narration. The ironical use of the intertextual encyclopaedia in Il sorriso dell'ignoto marinaio is typical of anti-illusionist historical novels and shares much with Hutcheon's observations on postmodern narrations.
