Nomi che cambiano il mondo. Alterazioni onimiche nel romanzo di Daniel Picouly Le champ de personne (1995)

The essay delves into the intricate onomastic code of Daniel Picouly’s novel,
adeptly navigating the realms of fiction and reality to explore episodes and
situations rooted in the author’s childhood against the historical and culturally
popular backdrop of the late 1950s. The recounted events and characters,
marked by onimic determinations that are at times authentic and realistic, and
at other times fictitious and imaginative, undergo skillful distortion through
the estranging perspective of a child narrator. Imagination, evident even in
the creation of names, not only warps the everyday reality of the young protagonist’s
life but also serves a more serious purpose by proving instrumental in
reshaping the tragic perception of specific historical events, thereby contributing
to mitigating their dramatic impact.