Transcript Dias nummer 1

ENGLISH LITERATURE & CULTURE
‘I’ IS ANOTHER:
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
ACROSS GENRES
Camelia Elias
Hoffman, Codrescu, Simic,
Federman
Eva Hoffman
• Born in Cracow, born in 1945 in Poland
• studied music
• Emigrated to Canada 1959 and then to the US (1979)
• studied English literature at Rice and Harvard
• becomes editor and literary critic for New York Times
Books
• Lost in Translation : A Life in a New Language. London:
Vintage, 1989.
• Exit Into History : A Journey Through the New Eastern
Europe. New York. N.Y.: Penguin Books, 1994.
• Shtetl : The Life and Death of a Small Town and the
World of Polish Jews. Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
• The Secret. London: Vintage, 2001
Andrei Codrescu
•
•
•
Born in Romania, Sibiu 1946
studied mathematics and philosophy at Univ. of Bucharest
came to the US in 1966, after a transit period in both France
and Italy
•
professor of English and Comparative Studies at Louisiana
State University
Books:
•
Poetry:
 Alien Candor (1996);
 Thus Spake the Corpse (2 vol) 1999-2000
•
Novels:
 Casanova in Bohemia (2002);
 The Blood Countess (1995); National best-seller;
 Wakefield, 2004
•
Essays:
 Zombification: Essays from NPR (1995);
 The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed in New Orleans (1995);
 Hail Babylon! Looking for the American City at the End of
the Millenium (1998)
Charles Simic
• born in Yugoslavia, Belgrade 1938
• came to the US through France in 1953
• studied at NYU
• professor of English at the U of New Hampshire
Books:
• Poetry:
 The World Doesn’t End (Pulitzer Prize) 1990;
 Walking the Black Cat (1996)
• Essays:
 The Metaphysician in the Dark (2003);
 The Unemployed Fortune Teller (1994)
Raymond Federman




born in France, 1928
came to the US in 1947
studied at Columbia University (first PhD on Beckett)
professor of French, English, and Comparative literature
SUNY
Books:
• Criticism:


•
Critifiction (1993);
Surfiction (1975)
Novels:



Double or Nothing (1971);
Take It or Leave It (1976);
The Twofold Vibration (1982)
common concerns
• the experience of the immigrant
• double emigration
• double perspective
 feel double
 be double
 produce double visions
• double expectation
impossibility and presence
• “In spite of the fact that
autobiography is impossible, this in
no way prevents it from existing”
(Lejeune, The Autobiographical Pact)
“I” against the grain
• “Autobiography now has the potential to be
the text of the oppressed and the culturally
displaced, forging a right to speak both for
and beyond the individual. People in a
position of powerlessness – women, black
people, working-class people have more
then begun to insert themselves into the
culture via autobiography, via the assertion
of a ‘personal voice’ which speaks beyond
itself.” (Julia Sweindells, The Uses of
Autobiography, 1995)
Trans-auto-bio-graphy:
characteristics
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
detachment
transit relates to both place and mindset
literal and metaphoric connotations
uprooting
autobiography based on transit experience poses
paradoxes:
 EX: In what language does one express the
confused awareness of the paradox of being
somewhere while not yet arriving, or being
somewhere physically while being somewhere
else mentally?
emphasizes mobility
specific and universal
Narratives of translated experience: the
legitimation of the ‘auto’ in the ‘bio’
Deal with particular questions:
• How can one tell a story about true events?
• How can one translate one's existence into a
story?
• Can the story told constitute one's life as such?
• Is memory itself a story?
• Can lying in writing constitute a true story?
• Can humor reconcile the difference between
invented stories and remembered stories?
coherence and closure
• does the narrator explicitly assert the
coherence of his/her story?
• are there moments when the impression of
narrative coherence breaks down in the
text?





digressions
omissions
contradictions
gaps
silences
Autobiography
Memoir
(Bios: life in history; Autos:
the self developed out of
that history
(Memoria (Lat.): memory; a
note written in order to
remember
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Deals with facts
Claims to be objective
Deals with an earlier
period of time from the
perspective of a
relatively fixed later
point
Seeks to find coherence
in the past
Requires more
knowledge of craft
Employs the literary
devices of the novel:
structure, point of view,
voice, character and
story
•
•
•
•
•
Subjective, reflective and
philosophical
Deals with moods and
feeling
Deals with any period of
time and it does not
necessarily follow a
sequence of events
More concerned with the
present
Requires skill if literary
intended, but is does not
rely on knowledge of
structure
Fragmented and
experimental
Lost in Translation
• Genre
 Memoir or autobiography?
Structure
• in medias res
• 1st person narrative
• present tense
• flashback
• interludes
--• prologue
• Greek tragedy
 chorus: the main commentators
characters and events
on
the
Thematics
•
•
•
•
departure/detachment
anticipation vs fear
excitement vs nostalgia and sadness
clarity vs confusion
Setting
• representation of place
• geography of emotions vs geography of
places
• conventional geographies
• Canada
 an abstract
• Poland
 idealized
• Vancouver
 artificial
Themes
•
•
•
Nostalgia for the past
Rejection of the new place
Dichotomies
 Nature vs culture
 Catholicism vs Jewishness
 Russia’s communism vs Canada’s liberalism
 Communism vs conformism
 Articulation vs silence
 Language vs artificial language
 Public language vs inner language
What’s in a name? (105)
“I” IS ANOTHER (121)
Style
• Observant
• Assumes the p.o.v. of the anthropologist and
psychoanalyst
• Writing exhibits self-awareness
• Reflects on the interrelation between the
narrator, writer, and reader
• Impressionistic, especially in ref to Vancouver
“I” as invention (160)
Conversation with History
• A Writer’s Voice
• Identity Theory