Axel Munthe's The story of San Michele as creative nonfiction

Abstract

It is not the aim of this dissertation to pass a clear-cut judgement on whether The Story of San Michele is Fiction or Nonfiction; whether Munthe has invented, any, some or all of the interesting incidents he recounts in the book. Anyone who has read the book would realise that such a purpose would be defeated from the onset. The real aim is totally opposite. It is to prove that the border between Fiction and Nonfiction is not as defined as we would like it to be. The real world and the world that we inhabit in our dreams, are not always disparate spheres. In the book, Munthe often confesses that at times it was difficult to distinguish where the dreams ended and reality began. Some people are afraid of their own imagination and keep their feet firmly stuck to the ground. Other people feel strangled by the pull of rationality and cannot help indulging in dreams and giving free rein to their fantasy. Axel Munthe happened to be one of the latter. Perhaps an extreme case of the latter. Perhaps just an extremely versatile case of the latter. The major difficulty that all critics (and readers) of The Story of San Michele have been faced with is that of defining the book's genre. Is it an autobiography? Is it a novel? Is it a collection of short stories? In short, is it Fiction or Nonfiction? In this dissertation I will argue that the book is neither exclusively Fiction nor Nonfiction but falls somewhere in the middle. It pertains to the versatile genre of Creative Nonfiction where works based on real facts do not have to adhere to the rigorous criteria of historical writing and where the creativity of the Nonfiction author is encouraged rather than stifled. Chapter 1 is a synthesis of the main events in Munthe's life as depicted in the biographies. This is followed by a discussion of the book as an 'Autobiography', which is after all its most 'popular' classification. Chapter 3 is entirely dedicated to Villa San Michele where I will compare the historical and archeological facts with their description in the book.