18 research outputs found
Autobiography, autofiction, representation, interrogation, remembering and forgetting
Introduction to the Autobiography edition articles
Yeats and individuation: an exploration of archetypes in the work of W.B. Yeats.
Abstract available in pdf file
Spectrality in Plutarch, Shakespeare, Freud and Derrida
Cassiusâs exposition on the self-induced nature of visions, as presented in Northâs Plutarch, is akin to Freudâs rational understanding of spectral visitations. Cassiusâs consequent fall into superstitious thought is all the more notable. Shakespeareâs Brutus, in Julius Caesar, if not at the mercy of such mental swings as Cassius, is subject at one point in the play to a different type of indeterminacy, that regarding the nature of the future. On the day of the final battle he says: âO that a man might know/The end of this dayâs business ere it comeâ (5.1.122â23). This âendâ, however, is connected with the promised appearance of Caesarâs ghost. What does this future, containing both anticipated and unknown elements, mean to Brutus? Unlike the predictable future of everyday, this future (though involving the return of the ghost) cannot be prepared for, must remain unforeseen, as it depends on the fortunes of war. My article draws on Freudâs understanding of spectrality and Derridaâs linking of this to his sense of the unforeseen future, to examine Brutusâs relation to it, from the point of view of both classical antiquityâs daimonic lore and the dramatic sensibility of Shakespeare
Autobiographical techniques and the problems of memorial reconstruction: Amis, Coetzee, Kermode and Motion
This article examines the various ways Martin Amis, J.M. Coetzee, Frank Kermode and Andrew
Motion approach the problems associated with memorial reconstruction and veracity in their
autobiographical writings. Using as a starting point James Olneyâs notion of the âfree conceptual
constructionâ involved in our general way of making sense of the world, the article goes on to
consider the means employed by these writers to negotiate with âthe archive of the ârealââ and
the âarchive of âfictionââ, to draw on Derridaâs terms (1992), in their various engagements with
the conceptual construction of life stories. A special emphasis is placed on what Derek Attridge
(2004) calls the âsingularityâ of that construction, its truth to itself as writinghttp://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rscr20/current]http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rscr20/18/1DOI:10.1080/18125441.2013.80371
Achieving form in autobiography
This article argues that, unlike biographies which tend to follow patterns based on conventional expectations, salient autobiographies achieve forms unique to themselves. The article draws on ideas from contemporary formalists such as Peter McDonald and Angela Leighton but also considers ideas on significant form stemming from earlier writers and critics such as P.N. Furbank and Willa Cather. In extracting from these writers the elements of what they consider comprise achieved form, the article does not seek to provide a rigid means of objectively testing the formal attributes of a piece of writing. It rather offers qualitative reminders of the need to be alert to the importance of form, even if the precise nature of this importance is not possible to define. Form is involved in meaning, and this continuously opens up possibilities regarding the readerâs relationship with the work in question. French genetic critic Debray Genette distinguishes between âsemantic effectâ (the direct telling involved in writing) and âsemiological effectâ (the indirect signification involved). It is the latter, the article argues in summation, which gives a work its singular nature, producing a form that is not predictable but suggestive, imaginative