EMERGING STORIES: THE (AUTO)BIOGRAPHICAL GAME

Sanda BERCE

doi:10.24193/subbphilo.2018.4.05

Authors

Sanda BERCE Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, The Faculty of Letters. E-mail: sanda.berce@zephiris.com

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24193/subbphilo.2018.4.05

Keywords:

experimental, (auto)biographical game, memoir, life-writing, interpretive field, self-representational impulse.

Abstract

Emerging Stories: The (Auto)biographical Game. The paper is an inquiry into “the game with the (auto)biographical”, as part of the Irish modern and contemporary experimental and innovative prose. The special status of these writings emerges from the self-representational impulse and defines a novel typology about temporality and time-control by the twin action of imagination and memory. The paper refers to the memoir as a complex merging of fiction and non-fiction in an interpretive field where the borderline between the historically verifiable facts and the fictive (constructed) events is unveiled. The Irish contemporary “memoirs”, containing a mixture of analysis and an (auto)biographical game, are viable responses to the emergence of the new and unfamiliar Ireland.

Rezumat. Istorii emergente: jocul (auto)biografic. Lucrarea este o investigație asupra “jocului cu (auto)biograficul”, ca element al prozei irlandeze moderne și contemporane, de factură experimentală, inovatoare. Statutul special al acestui tip de proză își are sursa într-un impuls de auto-reprezentare și definește o tipologie romanescă ce are drept principal scop a controla timpul printr-o acțiune îngemănată a imaginației și a memoriei. Lucrarea se referă la memorii ca la o formă complexă de combinare a elementului ficțional și a celui non-ficțional, într-un câmp interpretativ în care zona de delimitare dintre faptele verificabile istoricește și evenimentele fictive (construite) este revelată. Conținând o mixtură de analiză și “joc cu (auto)biograficul,” memoriile din literatura irlandeză contemporană sunt răspunsuri viabile la apariția unei Irlande noi și nefamiliare.

Cuvinte cheie: experimental, jocul (auto)biografic, memorii, narațiuni biografice, câmpul interpretării, impulsul autoreprezentării.

Author Biography

Sanda BERCE, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, The Faculty of Letters. E-mail: sanda.berce@zephiris.com

Sanda Berce is Professor of 20^th century English and Irish literature at Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, The Faculty of Letters, Department of English. She is author of several books and articles about British and Irish modernism – postmodernism, contemporary fiction and critical theories. Among her latest publications are Hotspots: Essays in British and Irish Contemporary Fiction (2008), Liquid Modernity and the Memory of Literature (2012), Interfață (2015), The Retroactive Canon: Constructing a Network of Modernism(s) (2016). E-mail: sanda.berce@zephiris.com

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