The subject of research in this master’s thesis is the presence of photography and its analogy with death and absence in the literary works of Antonio Tabucchi. Three of Tabucchi’s literary works have been analysed: the short story, “I pomeriggi del sabato”, and two short novels Notturno indiano (Indian Nocturne) and Il filo dell’orizzonte (The Edge of the Horizon). The analysis was carried out on the basis of two essayistic works, Camera lucida: Reflections on Photography by Roland Barthes and the On Photography collection of the essays by Susan Sontag. Additionally, we included the findings from some theoretical works on the theme of photography in Tabucchi’s prose. The connection between death and photography in the texts manifests in a variety of ways, most prominently through photographs as objects with symbolic meaning; showing the faces of deceased loved ones, or horrific images of “death”, such as corpses and people in their final moments. Tabucchi’s photographs also have other functions, in particular, they represent the medium through which different themes of his works are expressed, such as the issue of representation of reality, the pluralism of reality, etc. Furthermore, particular Tabucchi characters take on the role of the photographer. Last but not least, the writer’s style is marked by photography, by employing photographic terminology in descriptions of ambience and through use of the photographic concept of punctum in writing.
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