Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to prove that there is a very fine line between contemporary literature and ethnography. For this reason, it compares the most advanced theories in cultural anthropology and literary criticism, using specific references which surround cultural anthropologist James Clifford and literary critic Gérard Genette and the relationship between fiction and nonfiction genres. In the second part of this study, I use Gomorra as an example to prove affinities of this text with the ethnographic monographs of malinowskian type. In the end, the internal composition of Gomorra is compared with the narrative technique based on the "snapshots", formulated by American anthropologist Thomas Belmonte in "The Broken Fountain" for the first time, his study about poor people in the C Centre of Naples.