Structures of Disintegration: Narrative Strategies in Elias Canetti’s Die Blendung

This study examines the narrative structure of Elias Canetti’s novel ‘Die Blendung’ (Auto da Fe). The author first provides a survey of the reception of the novel and then examines its structural forms primarily on the basis of an intertextual analysis of three major episodes. He questions the capacity of sign systems to produce meaning. Finally he compares Canetti’s novel with the modernist urban novel and the French nouveau roman in terms of the representation of chaotic worlds.