All'ombra di Paul Gauguin. «La luna e sei soldi» di William Somerset Maugham

The Moonand Sixpence by William Somerset Maugham is a relevant example of an “artist’s biofiction”: a biography of an artist in which the mix of fact and fiction is evident (and aware), and which therefore has the aim of guaranteeing a double status to the characters and the narrated events. By nature, biographical fictions draw on referentially exact facts, reworking them through an arbitrary use of creativity and imagination, allowing the reader to constantly fall into the temptation of recovering extratextual matters which find, however, completion and meaning from within, in the literary dimension. The narrated subject in the work examined is Charles Strickland, a character who traces the artistic career of Paul Gauguin, his talent, and, above all, his unconventional behavior and extravagant personality.