"Autobiografiction": Problems with Autobiographical Fictions and Fictional Autobiographies. Mark Rutherford's "Autobiography" and "Deliverance," and Others

Swann, Charles

doi:10.2307/3735713

Cited by 4 publications

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“…As if to confirm such deliberations, Sven Birkerts submits that the reader tends to create a continuum between his own life and that of the protagonist of his reading,30 so that the authenticity of McCrum's own telling might be compromised. But equally, Charles Swann's deliberations on the fine borderline between fiction in autobiography and autobiography in fiction31 may well encourage our reading of Helene's recovery as Schmidt's actual world of experience and, indeed, Aronson recognises that ‘fabrication is almost unavoidable in autobiography, but if it adds verisimilitude to the account, is that to be regretted?’32 Indeed, despite such potential friction between fact and fiction, McCrum will (just as Schmidt) have been committed to telling the ‘truth’, not least since—as Smith and Watson point out—‘autobiographical narration […] cannot be read solely as either factual truth or simple facts’ (13) 33…”

Section: Fact and Fiction: Telling The ‘Truth’ About Strokementioning

confidence: 99%

Narrating stroke: the life-writing and fiction of brain damage

Zimmermann

2012

Med Humanities

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Cerebro-vascular events are, after neurodegenerative disorders, the most frequent cause of brain damage that leads to the patient's impaired cognitive and/or bodily functioning. While the medico-scientific discourse related to stroke suggests that patients experience a change in identity and self-concept, the present analysis focuses on the patients' personal presentation of their experience to, first, highlight their way of thinking and feeling and, second, contribute to the clinician's actual understanding of the meaning of stroke within the life of each individual. As stroke 'victims' necessarily speak from the position of having undergone very abrupt degeneration followed by being confronted with a gradual relocation within their 'recovery', the present study addresses how narrative texts describe the condition, that is, the insult itself and its impairing consequences for body and mind, and how patients portray themselves within their illness. Furthermore, given that all illness narrative must remain non-representative, especially when exploring conditions that impair cognitive abilities, autobiographically inspired fiction, equally, contributes to neuroscientific perspectives on embodiment: it gives further insight into how the condition is perceived and alerts us to those aspects of the experience that are understood as particularly momentous.

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Section: Fact and Fiction: Telling The ‘Truth’ About Strokementioning

confidence: 99%

Narrating stroke: the life-writing and fiction of brain damage

Zimmermann

2012

Med Humanities

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Autobiografiction: Experimental Life‐Writing from the Turn of the Century to Modernism¹

Saunders

2009

Literature Compass

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This essay approaches the large but surprisingly under-theorized topic of the relation between autobiography and fiction, concentrating on the period between 1880 and 1930, arguing for a new account of the relation between Modernism and life-writing. It introduces and analyses a key essay from 1906 by Stephen Reynolds, author of A Poor Man's House, which, strikingly, coins the post-modern-sounding term 'autobiografiction'. It argues that Reynolds' central concept sheds light on the vexed theoretical question of the relation between autobiography and fiction, and in ways that reach further than either Reynolds or the essay's few commentators have appreciated; in short, that 'autobiografiction' is potentially a much vaster topic than his essay countenances. The second section discusses the significance of the concept of 'autobiografiction' from the points of view of literary history and literary theory. It argues that Reynolds' essay not only offers a powerful analysis of the literature of the previous quarter-century, but also suggests how the literature of the following decades -of Modernism -can be reconsidered in its light. Such attention enables a re-description of Modernism: instead of the conventional account of its quest for the impersonal, the movement can be seen as developing these fin-de-siècle experiments in fusing life-writing and fiction. Reynolds' essay appears at a pivotal moment as Edwardian authors such as Edmund Gosse evince an anxious awareness of the radical potential of autobiografiction; and when Modernists such as Joyce and Proust embark on their most profound engagements with it: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and A la recherche du temps perdu. The essay goes on to argue that the issues raised by Reynolds enable a more sophisticated theoretical approach to the relation between autobiography and fiction, and explores the ambiguities which inhere in the term 'autobiographical' when applied to fictional works. Where Reynolds outlines the rationale for autobiografiction in fairly defensive terms, I argue for an appreciation of its radical potentialities. The study concludes by considering the trope, identified by Philippe Lejeune in Modernism, but here traced back to Aestheticism, that fiction constitutes a writer's true autobiography. This is placed in a broader philosophical and aesthetic context of reading fiction as autobiography, and autobiography as fiction.

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Annual Bibliography of Works about Life Writing, 2000-2001

Wachter¹,

Schultz²,

Page³

2001

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"Autobiografiction": Problems with Autobiographical Fictions and Fictional Autobiographies. Mark Rutherford's "Autobiography" and "Deliverance," and Others

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Narrating stroke: the life-writing and fiction of brain damage

Narrating stroke: the life-writing and fiction of brain damage

Autobiografiction: Experimental Life‐Writing from the Turn of the Century to Modernism¹

Annual Bibliography of Works about Life Writing, 2000-2001

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"Autobiografiction": Problems with Autobiographical Fictions and Fictional Autobiographies. Mark Rutherford's "Autobiography" and "Deliverance," and Others

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Narrating stroke: the life-writing and fiction of brain damage

Narrating stroke: the life-writing and fiction of brain damage

Autobiografiction: Experimental Life‐Writing from the Turn of the Century to Modernism1

Annual Bibliography of Works about Life Writing, 2000-2001

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Autobiografiction: Experimental Life‐Writing from the Turn of the Century to Modernism¹