Nonfiction novel and mockumentary: the (mis)alignment of two discourses anchored reality

Abstract

This paper examines the non-fiction novel and the mockumentary as two narrative practices which functioning is determined by formal, semantic and pragmatic criteria. Drawing on the contributions of Shaeffer, Pozuelo Yvancos, Browse, Gibbons and Hatavara, among others, the study argues that both discourses occupy an unstable zone between factuality and fictionality, and that their effectiveness depends on the ways in which they mobilize formal conventions and shape reception. Based on these theoretical premises, Javier Cercas’s Anatomía de un instante and Jordi Évole’s Operación Palace are analyzed as paradigmatic cases of two inverse movements: in the novel, a narrative committed to real events is configured through literary strategies that ultimately impose a kind of pact with the reader other than the one initially expected; in the mockumentary, a fiction adopts documentary forms in order to expose the constructed nature of truth effects. The analysis concludes that both discourses, by virtue of the forms the assume, compel us to rethink narrative truth as an unstable effect.