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Design and Truth in Autobiography

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... Pascal nudi podosta tradicionalnu definiciju autobiografskoga zapisa jer kao njegovu temeljnu preokupaciju ističe mogućnost istraživanja svijesti subjekta te analizu sebstva i osobnosti kako autora tako i ljudi s kojima je dolazio u interakciju. 5 Pritom stvara ponešto grubu razdjelnicu između unutarnjega i vanjskoga plana jer prema njegovu mišljenju psihološka dimenzija pojedinca preuzima prevagu nad okolišnim uvjetima, iako vanjski događaji nesumnjivo utječu na privatnu sferu čovjeka. Današnja istraživanja pamćenja veći naglasak stavljaju na društvenu dimenziju autobiografskoga pamćenja. ...
... 4 Az önéletírás az önéletírási emlékezet koncepciójához kapcsolódik, ezért időbeli dimenzión alapszik. Pascal az önéletírás meglehetősen hagyományos definícióját kínálja fel, mert ennek alapvető irányultságai közül kiemeli a szubjektum tudatának vizsgálati lehetőségét, továbbá magának a szerzőnek és a vele kölcsönviszonyba került embereknek a személyiségelemzését. 5 Eközben bizonyos mértékben durva választóvonalat von meg a belső és külső kép között, mert véleménye szerint az egyén pszichológiai dimenziói túlsúlyba kerülnek a környezeti feltételekkel szemben, habár a külső események kétségkívül kihatással vannak az ember privát szférájára. Az emlékezet mai vizsgálatai nagyobb hangsúlyt fektetnek az önéletírási emlékezet társadalmi dimenzióira. ...
Chapter
Dana 2. lipnja 2018. godine navršila se deseta obljetnica od smrti mađarsko-francuskog pisca, publicista i povjesničara Ferenca Fejtöa, a 31. kolovoza 2019. stodeseta obljetnica njegova rođenja. Dvostruki jubilej Katedra za hungarologija Filozofskog fakulteta Sveučilišta u Zagrebu prigodno je obilježila manjom znanstvenom konferencijom na kojoj smo željeli evaluirati vrijednost Fejtöva književnog i publicističkog rada, a potom ga staviti i u nova razmatranja. Fejtöv književni prvijenac, djelo Sentimentalno putovanje, koje je na mađarskom jeziku prvi puta objavljeno 1936. godine, a zatim nakon dugog prešućivanja i 1989, da bi od 2003. bilo dostupno i na hrvatskom, posvećeno je Hrvatskoj, odnosno Zagrebu gdje je pisac kao dječak – prije svega u vrijeme školskih praznika – kod roditelja svoje majke proveo ključna razdoblja svoga života. Zagrebački doživljaji imali su na njega snažan utjecaj tijekom cijelog njegova života, pa je tako i kasnije ostao odan Hrvatskoj. Za vrijeme domovinskog rata Fejtö je u francuskom tisku redovito davao glas gledištima koja su podupirala samostalnost Hrvatske. Hrvatska država 2007. godine odlikovala je Fejtöa redom Danice hrvatske s likom Marka Marulića za osobite zasluge u kulturi. Stoga smo smatrali da bi održavanje simpozija i objavljivanje zbornika s izlaganjima koja smo na njemu čuli moglo pridonijeti dostojanstvenom obilježavanju ove dvije obljetnice.
... "Memory can be trusted because autobiography is not just reconstruction of the past but interpretation; the significant thing is what the man can remember of his past. It is a judgement on the past within the framework of the present" (Pascal, 1960). An example is Harivansh Rai Bachchan's description of Champa, the wife of his boyhood friend Karkal, with both of whom the young Bachchan had enjoyed the closest of liaisons, briefly and tragically. ...
... and 'truth' are problematic when the subject looks back and tries to put together bits and pieces of his/her own past. In a chapter named The Elusiveness of Truth, Roy Pascal asked valid a question: "Are we then to conclude that truth does not matter over much in autobiography?" (Roy, 1960). Perhaps Paul de Man was right when he concluded that "the distinction between fiction and autobiography is not an either/or polarity ... it is undecidable" (Man, 1979). ...
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The scholars have engaged themselves in questions about what is private and what is public; notions of truth and fiction, identity, memory and authenticity, and what constitutes experience and narration. Theories have been emerging concerning the very boundaries and limits of the genre. The writer of an autobiography is expected to present truthful record of his/her inner and outer life. He/she should be honest and accurate in presenting his/her merits and demerits. While presenting a truthful account of their lives, the autobiographers also present a truthful account of their society. Georg Misch in "The History of Autobiography in Antiquity" explains, "Autobiography is unlike any other form of literary composition. Its boundaries are more fluid and less definable in relation to form" (Misch,1950). Roy Pascal
... 78-79). Likewise, Roy Pascal (2016) states that "autobiography is a shaping of the past". It constructs a coherent story in which particular stages in an individual life are linked together, with "a certain consistency of relationship between the self and the outside world". ...
... Whereas readers expect to learn about the author's truthful story, they do not expect a replica of all facts but rather the author's interpretation of her life (see Lejeune 1989, Pascal 1960). ...
Thesis
This dissertation is concerned with illness narratives or memoirs (Couser 1997, 2012; Frank 1995; Hawkins 1999) of contested illnesses (e.g., Hart 2014; Quinn Schone 2019; Swoboda 2005, 2006) written by patients/memoirists. Because contested illnesses are characterized by a disputed disease status, this study explores how constructing doctorability may constitute a narrative/reportability problem for patients. A total of twenty-two memoirs, eighteen memoirs about contested illnesses and four about non-contested illnesses, are analyzed from the interdisciplinary perspective of the medical/health humanities drawing on narrative analysis (Labov 1997, 2008, 2013) and stancetaking (Aikhenvald 2005; Chafe and Nichols 1986; Hunston and Thompson 2000). This study argues that narratives of contested illnesses amplify the credibility dilemma (Halkowski 2006) that all patients face in their doctors’ offices: we are socially expected to tell out-of-the-ordinary stories within the ‘ordinary cast of mind’ (Sacks 1984, 1995). Patients/narrators with contested illnesses are particularly challenged by the narrative demands of the reportability paradox: as more eventful a story sounds the more reportable, but the less credible it will be. It is speculated that in personal interactions, narratives of contested illnesses are likely to become contested narratives by virtue of the vague, subjective, and out-of-the ordinary nature of their realities that seems to push further the conventional boundaries of what we can afford to accept as rational and medically possible. The hesitancy in believing these patients’ accounts may be explained by the oscillation between the belief in the existence of certain symptoms that have a conventional reference to the actual, experiential world (e.g., headaches) and the disbelief in the patients’ emplotment of those symptoms reporting unconventional syndromes, as that emplotment challenges conventional diagnosis. Memoirists’ strategies to construct credibility are summarized in three main narrative strategies: (1) constructing credibility by challenging reliability, that is, by drawing on discursive devices of ambiguity and contradictions; (2) constructing credibility by means of “reported evidentials” that assert the narrator’s visceral knowledge as complementary to the knowledge of medical science; and (3) constructing credibility by displaying figurative linguistic devices as ontologically valid conceptual tools to represent experience. Writing memoirs plays a legitimization function in asserting patients’ conditions as existentially real, transforming contested narratives into ontological narratives.
... Anger and rage are also parts of the emotions which individuals have to endure in terms of coping with grief. Furthermore, Charmaz and Milligan (2006) Pascal (1960) believes that "In the autobiography proper, attention is focused on the self, in the memoir on reminiscent on others" (p. 5). ...
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Grief is a universal human experience that has become a recurring theme in various literature genres, especially in memoirs. This study aims to discover how grief is portrayed in a contemporary memoir. Using Kübler-Ross and Kessler (2014)’s five stages of grief, this qualitative study examines the embodiment of grief as expressed by the main character, Michelle, in the memoir Crying in H Mart (2021). The method of this study is qualitative approach. This research results reveals Michelle to have undergone the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Certain stages, however, were found to be more prominently expressed by the main character. This study is expected to provide contribution on better awareness and understanding of grief and its impacts on individuals and our modern societies.
... The specificity to what should constitute as the definite definition for autobiography is still a controversy in the discourse of autobiographies proper. For instance, Roy Pascal (1960) notes in the preface of his work titled: Design and Truth in Autobiography, the struggle to put forward a simple definition for what should constitute autobiography. He writes, A historical account is of great value for the centuries when autobiography was finding itself, but is only confusing in the modern period, when autobiographies of all sorts jostle for attention. ...
Article
ABSTARCT The existing critical reception of the beautifully written personal account of Kwame Nkrumah, does appear to overlook the essentiality of the contradictions in his language use. The autobiographical ideology that, in fact, language has a way of betraying itself or giving itself a certain measure of truth and meaning is at the heart of autobiographical proper. The narrative of Nkrumah reflects both his life and his struggle for independence for Ghana. From the word go, Nkrumah creates an impression on the mind of the reader to consider either to detach himself with the truth of the narrative or to continue to identify with it. This paper proposes to examine the issue of contradictions in this narrative. Among the many contradictions, emphasis will be placed on Nkrumah’s sudden admiration for the colonial master he has been fighting all this while, the essence of which is to look at the character of Nkrumah, his attitude in relation to his touted “messianic mission.”
... Nor is it simply a question of overcoming 'the teleological fallacy'. 21 Women seldom claimed mastery of their fate and their stories thereby reflect the disempowerment of the working class. ...
Article
The paper uses autobiographical accounts by 227 working women alongside a larger sample of men's life stories to compare girls’ and boys’ experiences of first jobs, schooling and family life in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It asks whether girls were disadvantaged in seizing the opportunities and fending off the threats to wellbeing occasioned by economic change. Girls were more likely than boys to experience sexual harassment and this constrained the ways in which they could earn a living and live their lives. Fathers as breadwinners merited respect and often affection, but it was mothers with whom girls identified.
... «Автобиографияэто, на самом деле, попытка писателя пролить свет на своё настоящее, нежели на своё прошлое» [15, р. 268]. Рой Паскаль (Roy Pascal) отмечает, что автобиография подразумевает взаимодействие между прошлым и настоящим [14]. Её значимость состоит скорее в раскрытии настоящего положения автора автобиографии, нежели в исследовании прошлого. ...
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The article analyses autobiographical features in the Cuban-American literature. Autobiographical strategies in the literary works of Pablo Medina, Omar Torres and Cristina Garcia are considered. Interrelation of autobiographical elements and the writers’ identity is examined; the peculiarities of choosing autobiographical self are revealed. It is shown that autobiography is simultaneously individual and collective in nature. The evolutionary stages of the Cuban-American prose are described. The author reveals the cultural aspects of losing historical Motherland by the immigrant writers, examines the peculiarities of their adaptation to the English culture and their efforts to establish communication with their readers. The conclusion is made about the influence of the ethnic writers’ life experience, cultural and linguistic environment on their self-identification and communication with different groups of readers.
... Before I move to discussing Skolimowski's films and his life, it is worth briefly presenting the concept of autobiography I will use here. Following authors such as Roy Pascal, Jerome Hamilton Buckley and Philippe Lejeune, from the times he revised his notion of autobiographical pact, I regard autobiography not so much as a matter of truthful representation of one's persona and life but of the impression effected by the autobiographer on his reader (see Pascal 1960;Buckley 1984;Lejeune 1989). Accordingly, autobiography is for me always relative, depending, for example, on the form used by the writer and the moment it is created and assessed. ...
Article
FROM PARTICIPANT TO OBSERVER: AUTOBIOGRAPHIC DISCOURSE IN THE FILMS OF JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI IN his native Poland Jerzy Skolimowski is regarded as an artist who conveyed his life and persona on screen more effectively than any other Polish filmmaker: the ultimate autobiographer in and for Polish cinema. This paper attempts to establish how Skolimowski managed to convince his viewers that his films are about him, and how his self-portrait evolved over the years. Before I move to discussing Skolimowski's films and his life, it is worth briefly presenting the concept of autobiography I will use here. Following authors such as Roy Pascal, Jerome Hamilton Buckley and Philippe Lejeune, from the times he revised his notion of autobiographical pact, I regard autobiography not so much as a matter of truthful representation of one's persona and life but of the impression effected by the autobiographer on his reader (see Pascal 1960; Buckley...
... Whilst high modernist male writers often classified autobiographical texts in relation to a feminised mass culture, influential genre critics of autobiography, from Georges Gusdorf (1956) and Pascal Roy (1960) to James Olney (1980), William Spengermann (1980) and Philippe Lejeune (1989), presumed that autobiography proper requires an absolute individuality which women lack. George Gusdorf represents an extreme version of this position: ...
... Each has functioned within an intellectual milieu of ideas and people. For this reason, the following accounts are, more accurately, an admixture of autobiography (wherein attention is focused on the self) and memoir (wherein attention is focused on others; Pascal, 1960). This combination reaffirms Stanley's (1993) observation that "a life, whether of one's self or another, is never composed of one decorticated person alone" (p. ...
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Prince I. M. Dolgorukov (1764–1823) was an interesting writer and figure of the Russian culture of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His life path was like that of many young noblemen of the period. Full of hopes for a bright future, he had to face a non-idyllic reality. I. M. Dolgorukov turned his juvenile (and not only) illusions into a central theme of his autobiography, entitled “Povest’ o rozhdenii moyem, proiskhozhdenii i vsey zhizni”. This article aims to demonstrate that autobiographical prose became for the prince a means of overcoming the disappointments of his “lost illusions”, by revealing the deceptions behind illusory realities such as the world of service and the court. Moreover, the analysis of I. M. Dolgorukov’s ego-text illustrates the apologetic intentions of the writer in transforming his illusions into a leitmotiv. By thematizing the latter, Ivan Mikhaylovich justifies the lack of the expected successes in his life and career. In fact, the prince systematically shows how, both in the army and in the imperial bureaucratic system, his hopes of serving the emperor with devotion are always destroyed due to the corruption that surrounds him. The present study highlights that ,in the author’s autobiographical narration, the theme of illusions is used with educational aims as well. From his personal experience of unfulfilled expectations and of believing in illusory ideals, I. M. Dolgorukov draws life lessons for his descendants. Finally, the article emphasizes that self-writing itself can be considered a form of illusion with which the autobiographer tries to fight the passage of time and to make sense of his past.
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Die Junge Slavistik im Dialog ist eine Konferenzreihe, die 2021 zum 16. Mal an der Universität Kiel stattgefunden hat und sich vorwiegend an Studierende und Promovierende der Slavistik und benachbarter Fächer richtet. Eine Auswahl der Beiträge wird jedes Jahr in einem Sammelband veröffentlicht – mit diesem Band das erste Mal im Open Access. Der vorliegende Band beinhaltet eine breite Palette von 46 Beiträgen aus unterschiedlichen Disziplinen und in fünf Sprachen. Es werden Fragen der Literatur-, Kultur- und Sprachwissenschaft ebenso behandelt, wie historische Themen und aktuelle Bezüge zu Medien und Medialität, Migration und Identität an süd- ost- und westslavischen Beispielen.
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This article examines the author's prose about the First World War by two famous European writers (and participants in the war) – the Briton Robert Graves ("I'm Sorry, goodbye to all this", 1929) and the German Ludwig Renn ("The War", 1928). The subject of the study is the genre features of the works, some features of which can be attributed to both autobiography and fiction. Special attention is paid to two poetological categories: the role of the protagonist and the chronotope. Ambivalence of the genre characteristics of the works themselves, since, on the one hand, they are documentary, and on the other – fictitious. Documentality or factuality is set by the specific biography of the self-revealing "I" of the author. Fictionality grows out of the absolute possession of the speech structure of the work, the author, the subject and the object of the narrative. Comparative historical and comparative typological methods made it possible to consider literary interactions, parallels, similarities, as well as borrowings and mutual influences of literatures. The typological method made it possible to consider the similarities and differences in literary phenomena by clarifying the degree of similarities and differences in cultural life. The main conclusions of the study are that the Briton Robert Graves changed "I'm sorry, goodbye to all that" into a documentary narrative, and Renn, on the contrary, transformed diary entries into fiction (the novel "War"). The aim of both authors, as Renn himself pointed out, was to show the war as it really is. The scientific novelty of the work is as follows: it was revealed that if the spatial and temporal pointers coincide, then nevertheless space and time in autobiographical texts do not coincide with the real one, since the recalled chronotope is not perceptual, i.e. specifically given, it has the character of a reconstructed in the memory of the author-the subject-protagonist. That is why we are talking about the synthesis of genres in the works of R. Graves and L. Renn, which accumulated features of both autobiography and fiction.
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على الرغم من الثراء الذي يذخرُ به الأدب العربي في الكتابات السيرية، سواء الذاتية أم الغيرية، لم يقابله ثراءٌ مماثلٌ ولازم على المستوى التنظيري لهذه الممارسات الفنية؛ إذ دارت معظم الكتابات بين التوفيق والتلفيق لما يجدُّ في الأكاديمية غرب الأوربية وشمال الأمريكية من نقاشات أبرزها نقاش الجنس الأدبي، وسؤال الذات الذي بدأ بمركزيتها وانتهى بزعزعتها، وصولًا للعولمة المعاصرة لمفهوم كتابات الحياة. تناقش الورقة بعض أبرز الإشكاليات النظرية لهذا الحقل البيني في العلوم الإنسانية، وتلك التي تُكثفها السير العربية والفلسطينية خاصة، منطلقين في قراءتنا لها من الممارسات السيرية في حقلها العربي عبر مفهومي السيرة والترجمة: السيرة بتفعيلها فلسفيًا ومنهجيًا؛ بإلزاماتها المكانية والزمانية والذاتية وبين الذاتية والموضوعية، والترجمة بإلزامها التأويلي الكامن في دلالتها اللسانية والتراثية والمفتوحة على التعدد، مع محاولة الجواب على سؤال حضور الآخر في السير الذاتية وما يحمله من إشكاليات الخاص من العام والفرد في الجماعة. طامحين بهذا تقديم مقاربات نظرية جديدة لدراسة السير الذاتية والغيرية. Arabic literature has a wealth of 'life writings,' both autobiographical and biographical, but this does not correspond to a comparable and essential wealth at the theoretical level. Being occupied with/by the theoretical discussions of West European and North American perspectives, notably those concerning literary genres, the question of the self that began with its centralization and ended with its destabilization, and the contemporary globalization of the term life writing, not much organic theoretical attention was given to this diverse corpus of Arabic literary practice. In this paper, I examine key theoretical issues of this interdisciplinary field in Humanities and how they are amplified by Arab and particularly Palestinian auto\biographies. By activating “sira” philosophically and methodically with its spatial, temporal, subjective, intersubjective, and objective aspects, and “tarjma” through its interpretative, historical, and linguistic implications, the paper engages with two main practices and concepts, al-sīrah and al-tarjamah, in its task to tackle these theoretical issues. This paper, as well, analyzes the question of the other in autobiographies through the prism of these two concepts and the challenges they pose for the distinctions among the private, the public, the individual and the collective, with the aim of contributing new insights to the theoretical debates of the study of auto\biographies.
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Our image of ‘conversion’ takes its form from well-known episodes in the lives of St Paul and St Augustine. Paul's life is turned around by a blinding vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus ( Act. Ap. 9.1–22); Augustine is directed by an oracle to a scriptural passage that ends his hesitations and sets him on the course that he has long known he should take (August. Conf. 8.12). Very much in parallel, although in a non-Christian context, are crisis-provoked life-changes reported by the Second Sophistic orators Dion of Prousa and Aelius Aristeides. Aristeides finds his life transformed by the intervention of the god Asklepios; Dion receives – he claims, from a god – advice that, put into effect, makes him the philosopher he has aspired to be. Were Dion and Aristeides ‘converts’? Adopting a conservative definition of ‘conversion’, I will argue that their accounts – though not autobiographies in the strict sense of that term – can legitimately be called ‘conversion narratives’. I will then test each for its goodness-of-fit to two influential life-change models, the first developed by Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner in the context of initiation rituals, and the second, Lewis Rambo's process model of conversion.
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Robert Musil a représenté les doutes qu’exprime la modernité au sujet des catégories de « l’individualité » et de « l’identité » d’une manière particulièrement intense. En même temps, ses protagonistes essaient de déterminer leur personnalité au-delà des certitudes religieuses et rationalistes. Cette tension entre la dissociation et la constitution du sujet sera étudiée à travers le récit Le Merle (Die Amsel) et le roman L’Homme sans qualités (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften) et sera mise en parallèle avec les modèles les plus courants de l’écriture autobiographique. Nous montrerons que Musil critique le topos fondé herméneutiquement par Wilhelm Dilthey qui décrit l’autobiographe comme celui qui fait avec souveraineté un examen rétrospectif de sa vie en la faisant entrer dans un ordre sensé, et ce, en étant lui-même plongé dans l’otium. Musil dénigre cette conception comme une « sorte de perspective intellectuelle, de raccourcissement des distances ». C’est à partir de là que Musil fait vivre à ses héros des manières différentes de se découvrir eux-mêmes.
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This article is based on the premise that all forms of life writing (autobiography, memoir, travelogue, etc.) are a mixture of fact and fiction. Thus, there is usually a self-conscious effort on the part of autobiographers to include creative or artistic elements in the process of documenting their lives. This textual study of autobiographic works by two ex-presidents, My first coup d’état (2012) by John Mahama and Dreams from my father (2004) by Barack Obama, analyzes the art of autobiography in light of the artistic presentation of facts, bearing in mind Stephen A. Shapiro’s (1965) study of the rhetorical resources of the art of autobiography. The findings provide a cogent understanding of the various literary dynamics of a genre whose border crossing between non-fiction and fiction has long been a subject of debate.
Article
This article is based on the premise that all forms of life writing (autobiography, memoir, travelogue, etc.) are a mixture of fact and fiction. Thus, there is usually a self-conscious effort on the part of autobiographers to include creative or artistic elements in the process of documenting their lives. This textual study of autobiographic works by two ex-presidents, My first coup d’état (2012) by John Mahama and Dreams from my father (2004) by Barack Obama, analyzes the art of autobiography in light of the artistic presentation of facts, bearing in mind Stephen A. Shapiro’s (1965) study of the rhetorical resources of the art of autobiography. The findings provide a cogent understanding of the various literary dynamics of a genre whose border crossing between non-fiction and fiction has long been a subject of debate.
Thesis
This thesis examines the issue of self-representation in recent German language literature. In order to trace the ways in which the cultural and linguistic displacement that are inescapable features of twentieth century European history are reflected and paralleled in literary constructions of identity, it focuses on the interplay between the autobiographical and the fictional, examining a range of texts within each writer's oeuvre. Thus a writer's autobiographical texts are read in the context of their fiction in an attempt to identify the problems of translating lived experience into literary discourse. The introduction offers a brief survey of the theory of autobiography in order to suggest the problems involved in classifying this notoriously hybrid genre, particularly in its modem literary forms. Then the writing of Elias Canetti, whose "Lebensgeschichte" appears to be so traditional at first sight, is examined and his emblematic "Verwandlung" metaphor is related to his plural notion of identity and his experience of displacement and exile. In the second chapter, Thomas Bernhard's central autobiographical narratives are examined in the light of his more fictional countertexts. In addition, the suggestion is made that the dialectic of assertion and withdrawal, represented by his recurrent notion of "Gleichgultigkeit", occupies a central place in his highly idiosyncratic prose. Then the recurrent theme of "Leere" is followed through the prose of Peter Weiss. This is related to his autobiographical narratives' quest for "Selbstfindung", which dominates even the ideologically-motivated revisions of Die asthetik des Widerstands. Finally, the conclusion uses Christa Wolf's Kindheitsmuster and Was bleibt as paradigmatic autobiographical fictions with which to illuminate the other texts and compares the overlapping metaphors the writers examined have created to represent the displacement of the subject.
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Career construction theory offers substantial new insights about Mary McCarthy and her generation of U.S. literary authors. While some commentators have noted that McCarthy’s profession bears on the interpretation of her numerous self-representations, this concern has been understood primarily as an intensification of the inherent reflexivity of life writing. This essay goes further, following Dix (2018a) in constructing the object of literary interpretation in two new ways: as the career in addition to the work, and as the career as represented within the work. In keeping, this essay proposes that Mary McCarthy’s entire oeuvre—including her autobiographical novels—might be considered first as life writing, then as a written life. In addition, because her work explored the reading and writing experiences that stand at the boundary between fiction and autobiography, McCarthy’s oeuvre may be linked to a body of writing in English that has begun to be described as ‘autofiction’. As Worthington (2017) has argued, contemporary autofictions offer a response to the emergence of ‘post-truth’ as a demagogic dissemination of the insights of postmodernism. As autofiction becomes a more prominent dimension of the contemporary literary scene—and as ‘post-truth’ erodes norms around the world—Mary McCarthy’s work should be moving back into focus.
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This paper proposes to critically reassess Maya Angelou’s second autobiographical work, Gather together in my name (2004 [1974]). In her literary representation of herself, Angelou chronicles her life journey as a young black woman with a fatherless child struggling to survive with freedom in the markedly racist and sexist American society of the 1940s. A close reading of the sinuosity of the narrative fragments reveals that Angelou composes a variety of womanist prose, according to Alice Walker (1983), identified as poetics of her autobiographical truth, through which the writer examines her inner life, disturbs preconceived cultural conceptions of women of African descent, and redresses omission of this historical subject who regenerates herself.
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This paper aims at offering an overview of diary-keeping practices in the Tibetan literary and historical milieus by describing the origin and evolution of the genre conventionally known as nyinto (nyin tho) or nyindep (nyin deb). The factual nature and didactic function of traditional forms of diaries will be compared to the use of the diary format as a narrative tool in modern Tibetan literature, especially in short stories and novels. The second part of the paper presents as a case-study the nyindep of a Khampa trader. The peculiarities of the diary allow for reflection on the hybrid nature of genre, suspended as it is between fact and fiction. The final section of the paper engages with some of the developments undergone by diary writing practices among Tibetan language speakers, presenting extracts from a discussion on the features of the genre as hosted in one of the many popular Tibetan social network platforms.
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Located at the crossroads of fact and fiction and relying on memory, autobiography defies easy categorization. This paper examines June Jordan's Soldier: A Poet's Childhood (2000). Jordan situates herself vis-à-vis her parents. The paper is trying to answer the questions: is Jordan transferring her identity through an act of literary creation or is she recreating herself? What is the role of memory? What is the impact of trauma? Does Jordan make peace eventually with her parents? Does Soldier heal the wounds of her childhood or is she still looking back in anger?
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Emerging as an independent nation in 1948, South Korea went through a difficult phase of political development shifting from a martial and authoritarian regime toward a liberal–democratic one. The April Revolution in 1960, the May 16 coup in 1961, the October Yusin in 1972, the Kwangju Uprising in 1980, and the June Democratic Uprising are the turning points of South Korean history which changed the political landscape of the state and extensively influenced its future. The successful democratic transition has provided substantial grounds for various interpretations of the critical moments in the contemporary history of Korea. Although the official historical discourse has become more democratic and critical in recent times, it still leans towards conservatism. The collective memory of important historical events has been continuously constructed by a wide range of educational tools, cultural products, and governmental programs in South Korea. The collective memory comprises individual memories of the past, but these individual memories are subordinate to the collective memory because they are subject to generalization and objectification, which result in the adoption of commonly shared views of the past. There are different sources through which the interdependence of collective memory and individual memories can be studied. One of them is an autobiography.
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One of the most fundamental, although unwritten, rules of diarising is that a diary should not be fiddled with after “the clock strikes midnight”, as Philippe Lejeune puts it. A diarist’s choice to enter paratext, particularly in the form of intertitles, into his/her self writing, seems to suggest a need for tighter structural controls over the text but also, to use words of Lejeune, it “kills” a journal through the violation of the said rule. All in all, journal intertitles and other forms of journal paratext are not very common, particularly in nineteenth-century women’s self writing. If they can at all be found in a diary, what form do they assume? What function do they serve? What effects do they produce? I look at these issues in Mary Shelley’s 1814–1844 Journal Books and ponder Lejeune’s dictum that rereading and its consequence, i.e. rewriting, can kill a diary.
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Este artículo analiza la relación entre autobiografía, lector y comunicabilidad en una obra de gran complejidad, la Autobiografía de Federico Sánchez, de Jorge Semprún. El problema de la comunicabilidad se intensifica con textos contemporáneos que son explícitamente ideológicos. ¿Cómo leemos estas obras, especialmente cuando los valores y creencias que se expresan en ellas no coinciden con los nuestros? Se complica más la recepción de esta obra al producir dentro del texto una mente exiliada de sí misma y fuera, un lector exiliado del texto.
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Peter Burke dedica este artigo à veracidade e credibilidade das fontes de informação, paradigma, que se vem prolongando desde épocas antigas, e que continua a preocupar o mundo acadêmico ainda hoje. Embora possa parecer, à primeira vista, dizer respeito apenas aos historiadores, este tema abarca todas as áreas do conhecimento e profissões. No contexto da Ciência de Informação e áreas afins, os estudos teóricos e a prática científica e investigadora valorizam, prioritariamente, a consulta da fonte de informação primária, qualquer que seja o tipo de suporte utilizado, por se considerar conter a informação original, embora não se menospreze a informação contida em outro tipo de fontes. O autor analisa a possibilidade, os limites e os fundamentos do conhecimento e seus registos, questionados e debatidos ao longo da história humana, e respostas extremamente diversificadas. A vigência do questionamento e reflexão das fontes de informação é importante e oportuna para os docentes, investigadores e profissionais da área da Informação e Documentação, que podem encontrar neste artigo várias práticas e posturas fundamentadas em textos de distintas épocas e temas. Agradecemos ao autor por compartilhar, no presente texto e em outros, preocupações com os que não se acomodam aos paradigmas instalados, cuja inquietação científica obriga à reflexão sobre antigos e novos problemas, característica do percurso científico, cuja necessidade e benefícios são incontestáveis, e que contribui para o desenvolvimento científico individual e coletivo.
Chapter
The chapter focuses on Coetzee's volumes Boyhood, Youth, and Summertime and explores the difficulties they pose as to whether they should be approached as autobiography or fiction. It builds on the most insightful theories on autobiographical writing and on references to various autobiographies, as it attempts to elaborate on and show the relevance of a more integrated view of Coetzee's stylistic choices (the use of the present tense and of the third‐person singular) and their ethical implications.
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