Structure and Organization of the Novel

Canetti gave Auto-da-Fé a well-defined structure and a well-constructed plot, in which events unfold according to precise causal and temporal relationships. Canetti organized the novel into three parts: Part I: A Head without a World; Part II: Headless World; and Part III: The World in the Head. He was well aware of Aristotle's prescription “A whole is that which has beginning, middle, and end” (Poetics, The Art of Poetry). For example, as noted by Thomas Falk,

Besides Aristotle, Canetti was also clearly inspired by Balzac's La Comédie Humaine and by Dante's Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy). In La Comédie Humaine, Balzac divided human society into three worlds: workers and peasants, the bourgeoisie, and the aristocracy. Before concentrating on writing Auto-da-Fé, Canetti had planned to write The Human Comedy of Madmen, which was to be modeled after Balzac's Comédie Humaine. In Auto-da-Fé, Canetti did not use Balzac's identification of three strata of human society (unlike Balzac, Canetti had no interest in sociological analysis) but focused on the contrast between the intellectuals and the masses. In terms of structure of the novel, the Divine Comedy became the main model for Canetti's Auto-da-Fé. The Divine Comedy is divided into three books: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. This tripartite structure reflected the religious/ Christian division of the world during the Middle Ages. The tripartite structure of the Divine Comedy does not only reflect a static representation of the world but also has a strong dynamic component as well, as Dante's journey through Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso symbolizes his process of reckoning with his sins (and those of his contemporaries and of humankind in general) and then finding redemption.