Nomina sunt consequentia fabulae: variazioni e alternanze nei nomi narranti di Emiliano Monge

Abstract

The paper analyses the onomastic variations of the main characters of El cielo árido, a novel by Emiliano Monge. During the course of the novel, the protagonist – Germán Alcántara Carnero – changes his name with the changing of the events that he becomes involved in; at the same time and with similar dynamics, the names of men and women whose existence is linked to that of the protagonist also change. For the creation of these names – which we might call ‘biographical’ – Monge resorts to audacious univerbation procedures, leading to fanciful syntagmatic names. By analysing these names, the paper will identify the morphological and motivational processes that led to their formation, as well as their translation in the Italian version of the novel (Cielo arido). On the basis of the peculiarities that emerge, the analysis will highlight how Monge’s naming processes configure, within the fictional onomastics, a sui generis typology of ‘speaking names’: namely descriptive names that vary with the changing of the events and roles in which the characters are involved, and therefore narrative names (or narrative allonyms), which replace and alternate with each other and distributed functionally throughout the narration so as to amplify the reader’s empathic processes.