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This open access book offers innovative and wide-ranging responses to the continuously flourishing literary phenomenon of autofiction. The book shows the insights that are gained in the shift from the genre descriptor to the adjective, and from a broad application of “the autofictional” as a theoretical lens and aesthetic strategy. In three sections on “Approaches,” “Affordances,” and “Forms,” the volume proposes new theoretical approaches for the study of autofiction and the autofictional, offers fresh perspectives on many of the prominent authors in the discussion, draws them into a dialogue with autofictional practice from across the globe, and brings into view texts, forms, and media that have not traditionally been considered for their autofictional dimensions. The book, in sum, expands the parameters of research on autofiction to date to allow new voices and viewpoints to emerge.
Relational Responses to Trauma in Twenty-First-Century French and Spanish Women's Writing offers new insight into what it means to write relational lives. It broadens the parameters of existing discussions in terms of geography as well as genre, drawing together two literatures whose prominence in life-writing theory to date could hardly be more different: while French women's writing has long been at the centre of international discussions of autobiography, the relative invisibility of Spanish women's writing remains striking. The dialogue that thus underpins this study, between diverse twenty-first-century case studies and broader approaches to life-writing, shines a light on what is gaine...
Through a close reading of eight Venezuelan novels published between 2004 and 2012, this book reveals the enduring importance of the national in contemporary Venezuelan fiction, arguing that the novels studied respond to both the nationalist and populist cultural policies of the Bolivarian Revolution and Venezuela's literary isolation.
On Diary is the second collection in English of the groundbreaking and profoundly influential work of one of the best-known and provocative theorists of autobiography and diary. Ranging from the diary’s historical origins to its pervasive presence on the Internet, from the spiritual journey of the sixteenth century to the diary of Anne Frank, and from the materials and methods of diary writing to the question of how diaries end, these essays display Philippe Lejeune’s expertise, eloquence, passion, and humor as a commentator on the functions, practices, and significance of keeping or reading a diary. Lejeune is a leading European critic and theorist of diary and autobiography. His landma...
The research collected in this volume consists of 18 chapters which explore a number of key areas of investigation in contemporary Iberian studies. As the title suggests, there is a strong emphasis on trans-national and trans-regional approaches to the subject area, reflecting current discourse and scholarship, but the contributions are not limited by these approaches and include an eclectic range of recent work by scholars of history, politics, literature, the visual arts and cultural and social studies, often working in transdisciplinary ways. The geographical scope of the transnational processes considered range from intra-Iberian interconnections to those with the UK, Italy and Morocco, as well as transatlantic influences between the Peninsula and Argentina, Cuba and Brazil. The book opens up some pioneering new directions in research in Iberian studies, as well as variety of fresh approaches to hitherto neglected aspects of more familiar issues.
This volume examines the blending of fact and fiction in a series of cultural artefacts by post-dictatorship writers and artists in Argentina, many of them children of disappeared or persecuted parents. Jordana Blejmar argues that these works, which emerged after the turn of the millennium, pay testament to a new cultural formation of memory characterised by the use of autofiction and playful aesthetics. She focuses on a range of practitioners, including Laura Alcoba, Lola Arias, Félix Bruzzone, Albertina Carri, María Giuffra, Victoria Grigera Dupuy, Mariana Eva Perez, Lucila Quieto, and Ernesto Semán, who look towards each other's works across boundaries of genre and register as part of the way they address the legacies of the 1976-1983 dictatorship. Approaching these works not as second-hand or adoptive memories but as memories in their own right, Blejmar invites us to recognise the subversive power of self-figuration, play and humour when dealing with trauma.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people had to cope with isolation due to lockdown policies that forced them to engage in fewer social activities. People were confined to the small space of their dwellings and felt constrained and socially isolated and deprived of meaningful social interaction and affection, which caused stress and anxiety. Several initiatives were put in place to help diminish the effects of isolation, such as those involving literature either through writing or reading. Managing Pandemic Isolation With Literature as Therapy explains the positive medical and psychological effects of literature and writing during a pandemic at a time when isolation prevented people from engaging with others socially. Covering topics such as clinical psychology, brain neurology, and stress, this reference work is ideal for psychologists, medical professionals, policymakers, government officials, researchers, scholars, academicians, practitioners, instructors, and students.
After decades of uncomfortable silence, Spain has now started dealing with its violent twentieth-century past. In recent years, a vibrant memory discourse has emerged in Spanish society: the number of films, TV series, newspaper articles, history books, and memorials dedicated to the Civil War of 1936-1939 and the ensuing dictatorship of Franco has increased dramatically. Literature has also played its part in provoking and maintaining this memory boom, and as a consequence, the study of contemporary Spanish novels has started revolving around questions on the responsibility of the author, on the impact of literature in society, on its role in shaping memories, and on its ethical status. This book takes up these questions in an attempt to combine the outlook of collective memory studies with the theoretical demands of Poststructuralist theories. Focusing on themes such as haunting and the uncanny, nostalgia, the Bildungsroman genre, and autobiography, its author analyses memory narratives in fourteen novels by foremost Spanish authors like Javier Marías, Luis Goytisolo, Enrique Vila-Matas, and Manuel Vicent. -- From publisher's website.
Although the boom in historical fiction and historiography about Spain's recent past has found an eager readership, these texts are rarely studied as two halves of the same story. With Genre Fusion: A New Approach to History, Fiction, and Memory in Contemporary Spain, Sara J. Brenneis argues that fiction and nonfiction written by a single author and focused on the same historical moment deserve to be read side-by-side. By proposing a literary model that examines these genres together, Genre Fusion gives equal importance to fiction and historiography in Spain. In her book, Brenneis develops a new theory of "genre fusion" to show how authors who write both historiography and fiction produce a ...
From Shakespeare to Autofiction focuses on salient features of authorship throughout modernity, ranging from transformations of oral tradition and the roles of empirical authors, through collaborative authorship and authorship as ‘cultural capital’, to the shifting roles of authors in recent autofiction and biofiction. In response to Roland Barthes’ ‘removal of the Author’ and its substitution by Michel Foucault’s ‘author function’, different historical forms of modern authorship are approached as ‘multiplicities’ integrated by agency, performativity and intensity in the theories of Pierre Bourdieu, Wolfgang Iser, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. The book also reassess...