Experiments in Life-Writing: Intersections of Auto/Biography and Fiction ed. by Lucia Boldrini and Julia Novak (original) (raw)
Related papers
2010
As for biographers, let them worry I am already looking forward to seeing them go astray. Sigmund Freud Never mind my soul. Just be sure you have my tie right. James Joyce 1. Between logic, epistemology and narratology It was in the 1970s that the debate surrounding the logical-semantic status of fictional discourse began to develop. The first and most important contribution to that debate was an article by John Searle, in which the American linguist argued that true assertions made in serious discourse and fictive assertions made in fictional discourse are similar to the extent that both can be considered instances of the speech act of assertion-making (Searle, 1975). The logical difference distinguishing historical writings from fictional writings according to this thesis lies in the illocutionary intention of the sender. The only dissimilarity between senders making true assertions in historical texts (journalism, biography, autobiography, etc) and senders making fictive assertions in fictional texts is that the latter pretend to be making assertions, though not with the intention to deceive. The two situations also differ from a pragmatic point of view since while in fictional discourse all rules of sincerity are suspended, in historical discourse these latter cannot be waived. Thus the pragmatic status of fiction guarantees the (external) sender a certain immunity which is excluded from the pragmatic status of true discourse.[2] It was during that same period that what are now considered classic works of historiography began examining the narrative and discursive strategies of the historical text in their consideration of what it means to 'make history' (Veyne, 1971; Elton, 1970; White, 1973). These studies privileged an epistemological approach but also began to reflect on the narratological characteristics of historical texts, underlining the extent to which their narrative and rhetorical organisation is similar to that of fictional texts. However, these writings ignored the contemporary debate regarding the logical status of fictional discourse, and thus missed the opportunity to connect two areas of investigation. Narratology also ignored the problem, at least up until the publication in 1991 of Genette's Fiction and diction which contains a chapter entitled "Fictional narrative, Factual narrative". Following in the footsteps of Searle, Genette takes up the discussion regarding the problem of the narratological (and logical) status of true discourse on the basis of the categories developed in his "Discours du récit" (in Genette, 1972), concluding that order, duration and frequency are similar in both types of discourse, whilst differences can be detected in the areas of mode and voice. Mode, according to Genette (1993: 65), differs because it is only in narrative fiction that we get direct access to the subjectivity of another person insofar as it is only possible to guess at, with any degree of certainty, that which is invented. Similarly, Genette affirms that the voice of a historical text coincides with the voice of the actual author and, in giving Searle's thesis a narratological slant, he arrives at the same pragmatic conclusion: the factual account implies that the authors of that account align themselves with what is recounted, and assume that what they recount is truthful (Genette, 1993: 70).[3] In other words, Genette allows that historical discourse is to some extent free to adopt certain narrative strategies of fictional discourse; however, on the one hand he excludes that it can adopt the strategy of introspection and therefore the modality of omniscience, while on the other he stresses its absolute commitment to truth.[4] The Searle-Genette dialogue confirms the widely held belief that whilst the status of fictional accounts are thought to be ambiguous, true accounts are thought to be unproblematic. Indeed, Genette's conclusion, like Searle's before him, reduces the problem of the logical-semantic status of true discourse to the principle of referentiality: the truth value of historical discourse, in other words, would gain implicit confirmation from the existence in the 'real' world of the named beings and the recounted events. Whilst we might accept that this conclusion accounts for many of the problems pertaining to the highly varied genre of what we perceive as history, it does not present a satisfactory model for assessing the nature of biography, that essentially hybrid form which continually transcends the boundaries of pure history to enter the domain of fiction. Genette's claim regarding the category of mode, i.e. that true accounts exclude the possibility of direct access to the subjectivity of others is in fact problematic.[5] Indeed, one of the most obvious similarities linking biography to the novel is precisely its tendency to organise itself about the category of character, something which often provokes introspective voyeurism or, as Nabokov has said, tends to characterise the biographer as a 'psycho-plagiarist' (in Edel, 1984: 21). 2. The commitment to scholarship Nevertheless, true accounts can certainly be distinguished from fictional accounts if we consider one rather important point-a point common to both the biographical account and the historical account. Historical discourse is characterised by a particular method which functions pragmatically as a truth-giving manoeuvre. The historian and the biographer must not only 'tell the truth', that is, they must make assertions about things which have or have had a referent in the 'real world'-they must also demonstrate that what they are claiming is true. According to Le Goff, this demonstration is achieved through a set of gestures that constitute the 'historical method', which the French historian calls 'the commitment to scholarship'. Le Goff's thesis is that
Writers on Writers: Literary Biography, A Distinctive Genre
1976
This essay identifies and illustrates a number of significant features that, in combination, make literary biography a distinct and recognizable genre. Among these are considerations of the various aspects of the composition of literary works, such as sources of inspiration, authors' motives and methods in transforming life into art, and similarities and discrepancies between fact and fiction. Literary biographers relate literary criticism to their subject's life in diverse ways-sometimes for exegesis, sometimes to show the style of a literary mind or personality, and sometimes to find analogues between lives and works. Literary biography also shows the author's art in the perspective of his or her lifetime, illustrating the mechanical aspects of composition and, less often, the creative aspects. Finally, literary temperament, the placement of the author and the author's works in historical and intellectual milieus, and the provision of the particulars of publication and bibliography are also goals of the literary biographer. (KS) * * via the ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS). EDRS is not * responsible for the quality of the original document. Reproductions * * supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original.
The Cambridge Companion to Autobiography
2014
Creative nonfiction is a form of uncommon colloquy, resistant to easy answers, to information mongering, and to definition itself. No wonder, then, that both the practice of creative nonfiction and rhe thought inspired by it are sites of envy-producing jouissance. As rhe essay is to the article, so creative nonfiction is to journalism. I If conventional [oumalism transcribes, then creative nonfiction transforms; where one recounts, the other remakes. Rather than take experience as its orienting, originating ground, creative nonfiction (urns to language first and last. It docs not know what happened without recourse [0 rhe narratives available for saying so. It knows that words and their interpretations are everything (nothing neutral in its variegated land), that experience has a syntax, that feelings have a gramlnar, that rhetoric is nor confined to politics, and that the self is equivalent to the set of questions that preoccupies
Truthful Fictions: Conversations with American Biographical Novelists
London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2014
The biographical novel has become a dominant literary form in recent years. But why? I interviewed prominent biographical novelists such as Michael Cunningham, Joyce Carol Oates, Julia Alvarez, Russell Banks, and Anita Diamant to get some answers. I have attached my introduction to the book, and the book contains my interviews with the authors. I am currently working on a new book of interviews with biographical novelists from across the globe. Bloomsbury will publish that book in late 2018, and it includes interviews with Colm Toibin, Emma Donoghue, Colum McCann, David Ebershoff, Chika Unigwe, Sabina Murray, Rosa Montero, David Lodge, Susan Sellers, Laurent Binet, and many others.
Marketing the Author: Authorial Personae, Narrative Selves and Self-Fashioning, 1880-1930 (review)
Biography, 2005
Marketing the Author brings together a collection of essays that explore the role of the author as agent in creating his or her own literary personae. Through the lens of biography the ten contributors attempt to historicize Michel Foucault's provocative question: "What is an Author?" The answer, according to Marysa Demoor's "Introduction," can be found in the late nineteenth century, when the status of the author began to shift to accommodate changes in the literary marketplace. The collection makes two significant contributions to the study of intellectual biography. First, it problematizes gender in the creation of both public and private identities. Second, it seeks to redefine the modernist moment by comparing the lived experience of canonical and non-canonical writers. Stephen Greenblatt's highly influential Renaissance Self-Fashioning (Chicago, 1980) inspires the new historicist approach of this collection. His concept of "self-fashioning" directly informs many of the authors in this collection, who essentially apply his Renaissance formulation to the modern period. Within this framework the book attempts, in part, to locate the roots of modernism in late Victorian society. The essays in this collection put the author front and center. Improved literacy and cheaper printing technologies resulted in an increased appetite for print during the late nineteenth century. As a result, authors developed a newfound ability to fashion their own professional and personal identities. This was particularly true it seems for female authors. Elizabeth Mansfield, Talia Shaffer, and Linda K. Hughes all examine women writers who crafted an authorial identity out of the patriarchal world around them. In her study of Emilia Dilke in chapter one, Mansfield concludes that "regardless of their biological sex, Victorian women could modify their intellectual or rhetorical gender" (32). Shaffer's study of Lucas Malet in chapter four attempts "to show how difficult it was to achieve an independent identity" for the late Victorian woman writer (73). At the same time, she demonstrates how Malet attempted "to invent a different model of female authorship" (74) by among other things, adopting a masculinist personae and "refus(ing) to be a sequel" to the career of her more famous father, Charles Kingsley (88). In chapter seven, Hughes explores the career of Rosamund Marriott Watson, and argues that women writers, in this case a poet, could be resourceful within the bounds of a pervasive and highly restrictive Victorian gender ideology.
Biographical Fiction: A Reader
New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2017
Bloomsbury has published the first anthology of biofiction. What is the nature of biofiction? How is it different from biography and historical fiction? How is it similar? What kind of "truth" does biofiction picture? How does it access and represent history and give us new ways of thinking about history? Hoe does it engage the political? This reader, which consists of a wide range of writings, answers these and many other questions.