ABSTRACT
The obscure aspects of Lithgow’s account of his eventual release are discussed below, pp. 171-72, but for the whole of his story of the Malaga adventures Lithgow clearly did a considerable amount of plausible reconstruction. Nevertheless, Burns concludes that Lithgow’s narrative of events ‘comes across as authoritative and realistic … The elements of À ctional shaping do not radically compromise the truth of the work, rather they enhance its polemical potency’, and he observes that Lithgow had hardly more À ctional details in his events than are to be found in other travel narratives of the time. If ‘À ctionality’ means that the construction of a tale requires some discrete, even contradictory, elements to be added to satisfy, for example, the spiritual needs of a particular audience, or for the author’s self-healing process, then Lithgow’s story is a pardonable ‘À ction’.44
