Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Fictional narrative autobiography'

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2013.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: To write a life story the auto/biographer must reflect upon the past that was once experienced. When presented with this task of depending on memory and narrative, the auto/biographer often finds himself/herself in the position of creating and imagining, rather than reflecting or presenting the past as it was lived. Fragmentation, forgetfulness, selection, (re)construction and imagination are often inextricably connected to Memory which results in the reliance on an unstable memory to access the past. This dissertation explores how postmodern auto/biographies, specifically the (auto/bio)graphic novel, acknowledges the difficulty of writing about the past when concerned with truth. The (auto/bio)graphic novel disrupts the notion of truth by blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction, resulting in a hybrid form where text and image, reality and imagination co-exist to create new, and often more significant pasts (that can serve the present).
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Om ‘n lewensverhaal te skryf, reflekteer die outo/biograaf op dít wat eens geleef was in die verlede. Deur hierdie proses, wat ‘n afhanklikheid van die geheue behels, vind die outo/biograaf homself/haarself gereeld in ‘n situasie waar hy/sy ontwerp en verbeel, eerder as om die verlede weer te gee soos dit beleef was. Fragmentasie, vergeetagtigheid, selektering, (her)konstruering en verbeelding is soms onskeibaar van Geheue wat dui op die afhanklikheid van ‘n onstabiele geheue in die skryf- en illustreer-prosesse van ‘n outo/biografie. Hierdie verhandeling ondersoek hoe postmoderne outo/biografieë, spesifiek die (outo/bio)grafiese roman, bewus is van die kwessies rondom die skryf van die verlede in verhouding tot waarheid. Die (outo/bio)grafiese roman ontwrig die idee van waarheid deur die grense tussen feit en fiksie te ondermyn. Gevolglik onstaan ‘n hibriede vorm van outo/biografie waar teks en beeld, realiteit en verbeelding gekombineer word om nuwe en meer beduidende verledes te skep (wat so ook die hede op nuwe maniere kan dien).
mlb2013

Deux amis, Albert Camus et Jules Roy se sont intérrogés sur leur identité d'écrivains barbares, nés en Algérie, puis exilés en France. Le double héritage de l'hellénisme et du christianisme méditerranéen a fait d'eux des humanistes qui doutent. Chacun d'eux s'efforce de répondre à la question + qui suis-je ? ; soit dans des oeuvres ou la fiction se mêle à la confidence, soit dans des autobiographies. Leur engagement personnel antitotalitaire dans les conflits politiques et militaires du vingtième siècle les a conduits à une pratique de l'autobiographie parfois implicite, qui vaut autant comme témoignage collectif que comme testament individuel. Albert Camus a disparu, un écho de son récit de vie inachevé retentit dans l'autobiographie de Jules Roy, qui s'est toujours déclaré le disciple d'Albert Camus
Albert Camus and Jules Roy, two friends, both pondered on their identities as barbarian writers, as both were born in Algeria and exiled to France. Influenced by a dual heritage of hellenism and mediterranean christianism, they became humanists, but doubting humanists. Each of them endeavoured to answer the question + who am I? ; either in works where fiction mingles with confessions, or in autobiographies. Their personal antitotalitarian commitment during the political and military conflicts of the twentieth century led them to use the autobiography in a somewhat implicit way, that can be read both as a collective testimony and as an individual will. With Albert Camus gone, an echo of his incompleted life's tale can be heard in the autobiography of Jules Roy, who always professed to be the disciple of Albert Camus

This study compares German memory of life in the German Democratic Republic with Russian memory of life in the Soviet Union, as represented and created within fictional and autobiographical narratives of childhood, published since the collapse of each regime. The chosen texts are, to varying degrees, fictionalized and/or autobiographical. A comparison between German and Russian narratives is particularly interesting because the socialist past is remembered very differently in each country’s public discourse and culture. An examination of narratives about childhood allows for a complex relationship between the post-socialist present and the socialist past to emerge. I study the texts and their reception, in conjunction with an analysis of the dominant ways of remembering the socialist past circulating within German and Russian society and culture. This allows the analysis to go beyond a straightforward comparison between the representations of the socialist past in the two groups of texts, to also explore how those representations are interpreted and received. It also demonstrates how the surrounding memory cultures appear to be producing quite different approaches to representing memories of broadly similar socialist childhood experiences. Chapter 1 explores the role of literary texts in revealing and shaping both individual and collective memory with a review of relevant research in the field of memory studies. Chapter 2 draws on existing scholarship on post-socialist memory in German and Russian society and culture in order to identify dominant trends in the way the socialist past has been remembered and represented in the two countries since 1990/1. The analysis in Chapters 3 and 4 reveals a more detailed picture of the complexities and ambiguities inherent in looking back at childhood under socialist rule through the example of the chosen texts, and in the ways they are received by critics and by readers (in reviews posted online). I demonstrate that, in line with the surrounding memory cultures, questions of how the socialist past should be remembered are a more central concern in the German texts and their reception than in the Russian texts and reception. I show, however, that the nature of the Soviet past is often portrayed indirectly in the Russian texts and I explore how critics and readers respond to these portrayals.

Notre réflexion consiste à analyser, sur le plan narratologique et énonciatif, la fiction et l'autofiction de Patrick Chamoiseau. Le rôle de l'écrivain y est démultiplié. Il instaure le doute dans la caractérisation générique de son œuvre, résolument digressive et paratextuelle. Il s'efforce de donner à lire un dire narratif créole dans une poétique du compromis- l'oraliture – où l'écrit et l'oral se télescopent, où une esthétique plus personnelle se débat dans une esthétique plus dominante. La mise en scène de la parole des personnages est le lieu d'une négociation scripturaire, littéraire : les énoncés mettent en relief le mariage heuristique de la fiction et de la diction, mais aussi de leur interaction intime avec des implicites énonciatifs – au sens bakhtinien de la théorie énonciative – qui traduisent le propre engagement idéologique de l'auteur. Chamoiseau tente d'extraire de sa narration polyphonique un sujet indemne des affres du présent et de l'Histoire. Il le construit par une parole, anodine et sérieuse, qui use de tout un spectre identitaire, pour se dire et dire la communauté. Les échanges prolifèrent ainsi à l'intérieur du rêve, de l'imaginaire, des histoires ou des mémoires que ses textes engendrent
Our thinking is to analyze, through narratology utterance, fiction and fictionalized autobiography of the writer Patrick Chamoiseau. Its role is multiplied. He creates doubt in characterization of generic text, a strongly digressive and paratextual text. He tries to give a reading to a narrative creole telling in a poetic compromise – the oralture – where written and oral collide, where a more personal aesthetic struggles in a more dominant one. The staging of the characters ‘speech is the place of a scriptural and literary negotiation: the statements highlight the marriage of heuristic fiction and diction, but also their intimate interaction which implicit enunciation – in a Bakhtinian sense of the theory of enunciation – that reflect the author's specific ideological commitment. In his polyphonic narration, Chamoiseau attempts to retrieve a subject free from horrors of the present and History. He built this subject with a trivial and serious word which uses a spectrum of identity, to say and tell the community. Exchanges proliferate inside the dreams, imagination, stories or memories that his lyrics create

This thesis examines five books by the American author Philip Roth commonly referred to as the “Roth Books,” which are The Facts: A Novelist’s Autobiography(1988), Deception (1990), Patrimony: A True Story (1991), Operation Shylock: A Confession (1993), and The Plot Against America (2004). These books, held together by the author’s proper name, are often viewed as texts that conflate fiction and nonfiction or demonstrate the “fictionality” of all factual narrative accounts in compliance with well-known postmodernist and poststructuralist theories. Contrary to this view, I argue that a valid understanding of the Roth Books demands that we acknowledge that these works represent a series of quite different ways for the author to transform his own life into written form, a creative act which is manifested in both fictional and nonfictional writing. In the attempt to argue this view, I turn to a field of study where the question about criteria for distinguishing fictional from nonfictional narrative literature has occupied a prominent place: narrative theory. However, my theoretical and methodological point of departure does not align itself with the “standard” paradigm in narrative theory with its origin in classical, structuralist narratology. Rather, the thesis promotes a pragmatic and rhetorical perspective which is argued to better account for how we read and make sense of different narrative texts. In opposition to standard narrative theory, where all narratives are considered to adhere to the same model of communication, I argue in favour of a view where narrative fiction and narrative nonfiction are conceived as distinct communicative practices. I open the thesis by showing that Roth’s books contribute to the discussion on how to distinguish fictional from nonfictional narrative texts (Chapter 1). I then continue by approaching the distinction between fiction and nonfiction in general theoretical terms (Chapter 2). And in what follows (Chapters 3-5), I present a reading where the Roth Books are juxtaposed against each other. This reading demonstrates how these texts, although in some sense related, because of their divergent qualities and differing intentions still communicate differently with their readers, inviting a readerly attention that is dissimilar from one work to the other.

A partir da comparação do primeiro volume autobiográfico do escritor austríaco Thomas Bernhard, Die Ursache. Eine Andeutung (1975), com o romance Auslöschung. Ein Zerfall (1986), o qual simula, de certo modo, o gênero autobiográfico, procura-se observar como os mesmos complexos temáticos são configurados nos dois casos e como as diferenças encontradas se relacionam com as diferentes intenções ligadas aos textos, bem como aos diferentes momentos de escrita. É possível notar como a ficção possibilita ao autor mais liberdade para experimentar formalmente, bem como para intensificar o ataque desenvolvido contra suas origens, ao passo que na autobiografia, apesar de também apresentar um viés crítico acentuado, o fazer de forma mais sóbria, ocupando-se com questões de verossimilhança e autenticidade próprias do gênero. Além disso, este trabalho tenta mostrar como a ficção, surgida na mesma época da autobiografia, pode ser lida como uma espécie de comentário a esta.
This work deals with the comparison of the first autobiographical volume of the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, Die Ursache. Eine Andeutung (1975), with his novel Auslöschung. Ein Zerfall (1986), which has some characteristics of the autobiographical genre. The comparison intends to show how the same themes are configured in both cases and how the differences can be related to the different intentions and different moments of writing. Being noted as fiction allows the author more freedom to experiment formally and to intensify the attack he developed against his origins, while in the autobiography, although it also has a strong critical aspect, he puts his arguments in a restrained way, dealing with issues of verisimilitude and authenticity, which are typical for this genre. Furthermore, this text will try to analyse how the novel, written in the same context as the autobiography, completes it and functions like a kind of remark to the autobiographical work.

L’enjeu de notre travail n’était pas tant, en menant une enquête sur l’écriture autobiographique dans la poésie d’Horace, de connaître la vie de ce dernier à travers son œuvre que de scruter ses rhétoriques et les stratégies de son autoreprésentation. Lorsqu’il compose ses œuvres poétiques, une seule et même préoccupation traverse l’esprit de notre poète depuis les Épodes jusqu’au quatrième livre des Odes, en passant par Épîtres : effleurer la possibilité autobiographique pour mieux y renoncer. Horace se fait une idée plus élevée sur l’acte de l’écriture qu’il investit de finalités esthétique, rhétorique, éthique voire thérapeutique. Il ne soucie guère de livrer le détail intime dans toute sa sincérité et son exactitude ni d’écrire en permanence comme dans un récit autobiographique. Il cherche au contraire à fictionnaliser sa figure finale, à soumettre son personnage au jeu de l’écriture et aux besoins de chaque pièce, à se former et se transformer en exploitant les ressources du langage. Dans les œuvres lyriques, à la voix du poète privé attaché à ses souvenirs et à ses sentiments amoureux et amicaux succède celle du poète officiel inquiet pour le sort de Rome et du poète génie fier de son talent littéraire. Mais, dans l’expérience du je lyrique, il y a constamment un jeu sur les exigences esthétiques héritées des lyriques canoniques de la Grèce archaïque et classique. Avec les Épîtres, notamment, l’écriture autobiographique coïncide avec le moment fort du souci de soi. La lettre se fait l’écho de l’inquiétude de l’être qui cherche le point fixe et l’équilibre, et pour son âme et pour son corps. Mais l’écriture de soi, si elle se charge d’abord d’une fonction informative intrinsèque, se présente aussi comme un exercice spirituel. Elle relève autrement dit, pour suivre Michel Foucault dans « L’écriture de soi », du travail de soi sur soi et de l’ascèse scripturale. Les Satires, enfin, immortalisent la vie d’Horace dans la société romaine et marquent le début de ses relations avec Mécène et Auguste. Leur affinité avec le monde du théâtre lui permet cependant de porter, à la manière de l’orator et du rhetor, un ou plusieurs masques, afin de gérer d’éventuelles tensions sociopolitiques et de transmettre l’idée qu’il se fait de lui-même ou qu’il veut que le public se fasse de lui-même
The aim of our work was not so much, by leading an investigation on the autobiographical writing in the poetry of Horace, to know the latter's life through his work than to scrutinize his rhetoric and the strategies of his self-representation. When composing his poems, a single concern crosses the mind of our poet, from the Epodes to the fourth book of the Odes, through the Epistles: to touch upon the autobiographical possibility to then better give it up. Horace has a higher idea of the act of writing that he invests with aesthetic, rhetorical, ethical and even therapeutic finalities. He does not care about delivering the intimate detail in all its sincerity and accuracy, nor about writing continuously as in an autobiographical narrative. He seeks instead to fictionalize his final figure, to submit his character to the game of writing and the needs of each play, to form and transform himself by exploiting the resources of language. In the lyrical works, to the voice of the private poet attached to his memories and his feelings of love and friendship, succeeds that of the official poet worried about the fate of Rome and of the genius poet proud of his literary talent. But in the experience of the lyrical I, there is always a game on the aesthetic requirements inherited from the canonical lyrics of archaic and classical Greece. With the Epistles in particular, autobiographical writing coincides with the strong moment of self-concern. The letter echoes the anxiety of the being who is looking for the fixed point and the balance for his soul and his body. But the writing of oneself, though it mainly comprises an intrinsic informative function, also appears as a spiritual exercise. In other words, as M. Foucault points out in "The self’s writing", it is a work of soul-searching and a scriptural asceticism. Finally, the Satires immortalize the life of Horace in Roman society and mark the beginning of his relationship with Maecenas and Augustus. Their affinity with the theater world, however, allows him to play, like the orator and the rhetor, one or several characters in order to manage potential socio-political tensions and to convey the idea he has of himself or that he wants the audience to make of himself

Pendant de nombreuses années, Aharon Appelfeld, Philip Roth et Primo Levi entretiennent une sorte de « dialogue à distance », interrompu en 1987 par la mort de ce dernier. Notre travail vise à analyser les modalités à travers lesquelles la production de ces trois écrivains – marqués de manière plus ou moins « directe » par l’histoire de la deuxième guerre mondiale et la mémoire de la Shoah – complexifie, avant tout sur le plan fictionnel, une certaine conception du témoignage, dont les enjeux esthétiques sont loin d’être anodins. Certes, dans un premier temps il a été important de reconstituer la correspondance triangulaire entre Levi, Appelfeld et Roth ; bien que fondamentale, ce n’est pas la composante philologique de notre recherche que nous avons souhaité mettre en avant, mais plutôt la pertinence d’un rapprochement de corpus en apparence distants, et pourtant liés par des questionnements analogues. Il est évident que si la possibilité de consulter, donc de disposer de documents d’archive pour la plupart inédits et d’accéder à des échanges parfois publics – quoique destinés à un auditoire en quelque sorte « communautaire » – a été précieuse afin d’alimenter la réflexion, le fait de lier de manière trop manifeste les considérations au sujet des démarches (poétiques ou politiques) de nos trois auteurs à leur complicité intellectuelle et, le cas échéant, à leur amitié aurait pu minimiser la portée de certaines observations – et suggérer de faux rapports de cause à effet
My doctoral thesis explores the relationship between literature and historical witnessing. By focusing on the works of Primo Levi, Aharon Appelfeld, and Philip Roth (authors who relate in very different ways the trauma of the Holocaust), my research aims at investigating the enmeshment of aesthetic and epistemological issues. My comparative exploration of these authors is motivated by and allows for a conceptual layering of the problem along three distinct research axes : (1) each author maintains a different degree of autobiographical involvement with the genocidal facts he evokes, ranging from maximum directness (Levi) to an oblique post hoc distance (Roth) ; (2) each author thematizes the problem by framing fictional situations in which characters have to cope with the plastic tension of narrative recollection ; (3) there is a twofold factual link between the three authors consisting in (a) explicit or covert intertextual quotations (e.g. Levi and Appelfeld become characters in Roth’s "Operation Shylock") and, more significantly, (b) an under-investigated circular correspondence in which each of them discusses at length the gains and losses of (literary) historical witnessing. The core of my project, therefore, is grounded in the long-distance conversation on the reworking of memories between Aharon Appelfeld, Philip Roth and Primo Levi – a three-way conversation that perforce ceased with Levi’s death in 1987

Looking to the places we live to inform our understandings of identity and belonging, this métissage of place-based stories draws on personal narratives and intergenerational stories to re/create meaning in new spaces and contexts. Through the interweaving of personal and academic stories, this research provides a space for critical engagement, creative scholarship and learning. The pedagogical possibilities of places and understanding of curriculum as both the lived experiences and knowledge/s that shape and in/form our identities and understandings. As newcomers, settlers, and treaty members, living on Turtle Island/North America, perhaps we must begin by looking at the places where we live and dwell, to better understand our responsibilities to both the land and peoples. Unsettling narratives that disrupt textbooks histories, and the re/telling of new/old stories. Using bricolage to gather up the fragments and/or pieces left behind – artefacts, memories and stories, I begin to re/trace the footsteps of my grandmothers - the re/learning his/her/stories, stories of shifting cultural identities and landscapes - and be/longing to places, while also examining how notions of be/longing are transformed through intergenerational stories and our connections to places. Stories that may help to move and guide us forward in a good way. From wasteland to reconciliation, this work examines the meaning of places to our lives and learning, as well as our responsibilities to land and peoples – those who came before, and the generations before us.

Este estudo investiga, a partir de um romance de João Gilberto Noll, aspectos que marcam grande parte da narrativa contemporânea brasileira. Privilegia o romance Berkeley em Bellagio, como uma narrativa que concentra questões cruciais de nosso tempo e da ficção contemporânea, tais como: crise das identidades; a fragmentação do sujeito; ficção e autobiografia; a construção da figura autoral; as relações entre trânsito espacial e descentramento da identidade; escrita performática e os usos do corpo
This study investigates, through a novel by João Gilberto Noll, aspects that mark great part of brazilian contemporary narrative. It analyses the novel Berkeley em Bellagio as a narrative that concentrates crucial questions of our time and of contemporary fiction, such as: crisis of identities; fragmentation of subject; fiction and autobiography, construction of authorial figure, relations between spatial transition and the decentering of identity; performative writing and the uses of body

L’étude comparative de Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Harriet Jacobs), Our Nig ; Sketches from the Life of a Free Black (Harriet Wilson) et The Bondwoman’s Narrative (Hannah Crafts) s’attache à ouvrir de nouvelles perspectives sur la singularité du sujet féminin noir dans les anfractuosités de l’écriture autobiographique du récit d’esclave. Si ces femmes auteurs se constituent en témoins privilégiés de la condition féminine noire de l’Amérique « antebellum », elles n’engagent pas moins leur plume dans l’activisme. L’enjeu de cette thèse est de revenir sur les liens entre écriture et féminin en prenant comme point de départ l’œuvre elle-même, fût-elle autobiographie ou fiction. La saisie de soi et du monde et la quête identitaire sont des thèmes fondamentaux de la tradition romanesque africaine américaine où des voix marquantes se succèdent. L’affranchissement du genre autobiographique s’affirme comme instance de survie où la mise en perspective de la fiction permet de révéler la vérité du sujet. Ainsi, la question du genre constitue la trame de ce panorama où sont examinés la nature du discours du sujet noir, l’écriture du corps féminin, et le théâtre « ima-gyn-aire » d’un sujet en crise. En véritable héritière de Dickens et Byron, Hannah Crafts s’attache à créer des correspondances entre les genres, tandis que Harriet Wilson adresse une lettre ouverte à Emerson et Harriet Jacobs subvertit le roman sentimental. Ces trois femmes situent, contre toute attente, l’esthétique du récit d’esclave au carrefour de la littérature autobiographique, sentimentale, gothique et picaresque. Nous verrons, à travers ce travail, que ce n’est pas tant l’anatomie qui distingue le sujet mais plutôt la façon qu’a le sujet de se ranger d’un côté ou de l’autre du genre ; le sujet féminin peut désormais évoluer dans un nouvel espace le libérant de l’emprise du masculin. Cette thèse est également l’occasion d’une réflexion sur la dialectique de l’historicité et la littérarité où l’engagement politique de l’auteur du récit d’esclave, qui est appelé à s’imposer comme littérature, invite à porter un nouveau regard sur la production littéraire féminine avant-gardiste, et ainsi donner un nouvel élan à la littérature africaine américaine
The comparative study of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Harriet Jacobs), Our Nig ; Sketches from the Life of a Free Black (Harriet Wilson), and The Bondwoman’s Narrative (Hannah Crafts) aims at opening up new perspectives on the specificity of the female subject, through the slave narrative’s autobiographical writing. If these women writers stand as privileged witnesses of the female condition in Antebellum America, they do not remain passive nonetheless. The aim of this dissertation is to approach the links between « writing » and « feminine », by taking into account the text itself, be it autobiographical or fictionalized. Significantly enough, self-consciousness, identity and the construction of a self through writing are definitely major components of the African American literary tradition in which outstanding voices are singled out. The slave narrative tends to drift away from autobiography in order to afford its survival and conforms to the conventions that proved successful, thus revealing the truth of the subject. In this perspective, gender is the key issue of this study which brings an exclusive insight on black women’s writing. Discursive difference, writing the female body, and a staged conflicted subject are the core themes of this work. As a follower of Dickens and Byron, Hannah Crafts creates a unique blend of genres, while Harriet Wilson’s modus operandi is to rewrite Emerson’s reflections on society, and Harriet Jacobs offers a subversion of the sentimental novel. By all means, these female slave narratives’ « tour de force » lies in the aesthetics and poetics of the genre located at the crossroads of autobiography, sentimental fiction, the gothic and the picaresque. The subject determines its own sexuation, which enables the female subject to break free from the male subject. This dissertation also offers the opportunity to raise the question of history and literature. The slave narrative falls within the frame of literature as the writer’s political stance is an invitation to reconsider avant-garde women’s literary production within the African American literary canon

La présente thèse a pour but de ressortir l'implicite de l'œuvre de Tierno Monénembo. Elle se structure autour de trois axes principaux ; le premier étudie les instances narratives ; le deuxième porte sur les principaux actants du récit ; le troisième axe permet d'élaborer la genèse du mythe personnel de l'écrivain à travers l'exil. L'analyse psychocritique de l'œuvre de Monénembo se veut être aussi une étude portant sur la psychologie des personnages, elle tâche de mettre en exergue le malaise identitaire des personnages et celui de l'exilé en somme, face à des traumatismes sociopolitiques, les personnages éprouvent la nostalgie du royaume de l'enfance. Cette structure récurrente dans l'œuvre est la résultante d'un passé troublant. Celui-ci se traduit dans le discours des narrateurs. Ces derniers s'inspirent en général de l'univers familial ou de celui du pays natal " mal sorti " du joug colonial français

Agnès Varda ha deixat empremtes visibles de la seva subjectivitat en una filmografia desenvolupada pràcticament en sis dècades. El propòsit és abordar el conjunt de l’obra cinematogràfica de Varda rastrejant-hi aquestes empremtes subjectives, lligades a una manifestació de l’autoria, a través dels comentaris escrits i dits per la mateixa cineasta inscrits en els films; i també fer atenció a les diverses formes d’autorepresentació en relació amb la projecció de la cineasta en diversos personatges de les seves ficcions i la presència física d’ella mateixa a les imatges. Analitzant aquests elements, el text vol considerar les aportacions de Varda a la modernitat cinematogràfica en la mesura que, amb una gran llibertat creativa, ha inventat noves formes posant en qüestió les convencions genèriques, entre les quals la divisió entre documental i ficció.
Agnès Varda has left visible imprints of her subjectivity in her filmography developed over the last six decades. The objective of this doctoral thesis is to consider her entire cinematograghic work scrutinizing these subjective imprints and, through the filmmaker’s voice on off commentaries, linking them to a manifestation of authorship and the desire to exemplify that the world is represented through a singular point of view. Attention is called to the diverse forms of self-representation in the projection of the filmmaker through diverse characters as well as her physical presence in images. Analizing these elements, this text considers Varda’s contribution to modern cinematography to the extent that, through great creative freedom, she has invented new forms which question generic conventions, amongst them the distinction between documentary and fiction.

Les images de soi produites par un auteur dans des romans autobiographiques peuvent, dans le contexte actuel, recouper ses représentations sur ses profils numériques, faisant apparaître une dynamique influençant la lecture des textes littéraires, la position institutionnelle de l’écrivain et la relation de ce dernier au lecteur. Nous avons voulu défendre l’idée selon laquelle, s’il n’est pas déterminant de prendre en compte la personne réelle de celui ou celle qui signe l'œuvre (y compris dans le cas d'autofictions), sa figure construite à la fois dans le discours littéraire et dans les espaces d’expression numériques brise la frontière entre texte et hors-texte.Afin d'observer les implications de la rencontre entre double virtuel et double fictionnel de l’auteur, nous nous attachons plus particulièrement aux cas de Chloé Delaume et de Tao Lin. Ce dernier sature ses textes de renvois entre sa vie, internet et son œuvre, mettant en lumière des éléments de référentialité (notamment entre personne et personnage) désormais accessibles à ce que nous nommons des lecteurs-internautes. Concernant Chloé Delaume, c’est au niveau du support de fiction que l’exploration de nouveaux médias se joue : les outils informatiques, comme une contrainte oulipienne, servent de cadre technique à partir duquel l’écriture est appelée à naître. Dans leurs approches respectives, nous nous sommes intéressée à la mise en place d’un récit de soi transmédiatique, induisant une nouvelle matrice diégétique d’une part, et de nouveaux comportements de lecture d’autre part. La curiosité du lecteur peut être nourrie par les réseaux sociaux ; or, non seulement l’accès à la vie de l’auteur reste un mirage, mais cela ne donne à ce dernier que plus d’armes pour manipuler le lecteur s’il le souhaite
The self-images produced by an author within autobiographical novels tend to overlap, in our digital era, his or her online representations, thus influencing the reading of the text, the institutional position of the writer and his or her relationship to the reader. More broadly, although it is not necessary to take into account the actual person producing the work of art (including in the case of autofictions), the figure he or she constructs within literary speech and digital spaces for expression breaks the boundary between text and what is located outside of the text. In order to parse what the encounter between the digital version and the literary version of the author involves, I chose to focus on the works of Chloé Delaume and Tao Lin. The latter uses material coming straight from his own social media in his novels, highlighting elements of referentiality (especially between person and persona), now available to what I call readers-internet users. As for Chloé Delaume, she explores new media through various mediums of fiction: she uses technological tools as a frame, akin to an Oulipian constraint, in order to let a specific kind of writing emerge. What interested me in their approaches is their construction of a transmedia self-narrative leading on the one hand to a new diegetic matrix and on the other to new ways of reading. The reader's curiosity can be nourished by social media; however, not only does the access to the writers' life remain an illusion, but it only gives more power to them if they wish to manipulate the reader

Depuis son invention par Serge Doubrovsky en 1977, le concept d’autofiction n’a cessé d’évoluer et de stimuler la réflexion sur la production romanesque. Après sa consécration en France, l’autofiction gagne les littératures européennes et occidentales, d’abord en Allemagne et en Pologne, puis au Canada et aux États-Unis, ou encore en Espagne et en Amérique latine. Elle franchit ensuite les frontières pour s’adapter aux spécificités culturelles des littératures étrangères. Elle est adoptée au Japon, questionnée en Iran et pratiquée aux Antilles, dans l’Océan Indien, en Afrique du Sud, au Brésil ou encore en Chine. Depuis quelques années, le phénomène littéraire semble gagner le monde arabe. Certains écrivains s’en réclament, d’autres s’en accommodent et d’autres préfèrent employer divers concepts pour définir leur pratique romanesque, ce qui a poussé la critique arabe à forger un vocabulaire technique. Parmi les notions proposées, un terme se dégage : al-taḫyīl al-ḏātī. Mais cette nouvelle terminologie peut-elle attester l’émergence d’un « nouveau genre » dans la littérature arabe ? La présente thèse se propose donc d’étudier la question de la validité de l’autofiction dans la littérature arabe. La première partie de cette thèse donne un aperçu historique de la longue tradition d’écriture du moi depuis le XIXe siècle. La seconde partie questionne la production romanesque contemporaine, ensuite présente un certain nombre d’œuvres qui sont à mi-chemin entre l’autobiographie et la fiction, pose le débat critique et fixe notre cadre théorique. La troisième partie est consacrée à l’étude des œuvres choisies de Mohamed Choukri, de Sonallah Ibrahim et de Rachid pour observer au plus près la pratique autofictionnelle, d’en comprendre les mécanismes et d’en connaître les motivations. À partir de ces trois auteurs et des exemples qu’ils nous donnent de leur pratique d’écriture, on se propose dans la conclusion d’établir un modèle d’autofiction arabe et de définir des thèmes que l’on pourrait appliquer à un vaste ensemble de textes modernes et contemporains
Since its invention by Serge Doubrovsky in 1977, the concept of auto-fiction has continued evolve and stimulate thinking about the novel and its production. After its consecration in France, the auto-fiction has won over European and Western literature, starting first in Germany and Poland, Canada and the United States, as well as gathering acclaim in Spain and Latin America. It then crossed borders and adopted itself to the cultural specificities of foreign literature which is why it has also been adopted in Japan, questioned in Iran and practiced in the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, South Africa, Brazil or China. In recent years, this literary phenomenon has also gained momentum in the Arab world. Some Arab writers have adopted it, others have accommodated it, and still others have chosen various concepts to help define their practice as novelists, inspiring the critics to create a new technical vocabulary such as: al-taḫyīl al-ḏātī. However, does the creation of new Arabic terminology within the realm of auto-fiction merit the claim that a ‘‘new genre’’ has emerged in the Arabic literature? This study raises the question of the validity of the auto-fiction as applied to Arabic literature. Therefore, the first part of this thesis gives a historical panorama of the long tradition of auto-fiction since the 19th century. The second part questions the contemporary novel’s production, then presents a number of works that are part autobiography and part fiction, exemplifying the critical debate that sets up the theoretical framework of this study. The third part is dedicated to studying selected works by Mohamed Choukri, Sonallah Ibrahim and Rashid El-Daïf and examining the practice of these authors use of auto-fiction in order to understand its mechanisms and their motivations. In conclusion, as a result of the examination of these three authors and the examples they give of their writing, an attempt is made to show a pattern for Arab auto-fiction in order to identify some of the themes that could be applied to a wide set of modern and contemporary texts
استمرّ مفهوم autofiction أو "ذات متخلية" في تطوّره و تطوير التفكير حول إنتاج الرواية، منذ اختراعه من قبل سيرج دوبروفسكي في عام 1977. بعد تكريسه في فرنسا، يتقدّم المفهوم في الأدب الأوروبي والغربي، أوّلاً في ألمانيا وبولندا وكندا والولايات المتّحدة، أو في إسبانيا وأمريكا اللاتينية. ثم يجتاز الحدود ليَتَأَقْلَمَ بخصوصيات ثقافة الأدب الأجنبي. فتَمّ اعتماده في اليابان، شُكِّكَ به في إيران وتمارس في منطقة البحر الكاريبي والمحيط الهندي وجنوب أفريقيا والبرازيل والصين. وفي السنوات الأخيرة، يبدو أن هذه الظاهرة الأدبية تكتسح العالم العربي. بدأ بعض الكتّاب يصرحون بانتماء نصوصهم إلى هذه الكتابة الأدبية، والبعض الآخر يعترفون بأن نصوصهم تنتمي سردياً إلى هذا النوع الأدبي غير أنها تحافظ على تجنيسها المألوف (الرواية، السيرة الذاتية، الخ) وآخرون يفضلون استخدام مفاهيم مختلفة لتعريف تجاربهم الروائية، مما دفع النقاد العرب بصياغة مفردات تقنية جديدة. و يظهر من بين المفاهيم المقترحة مصطلح "الــــتخييل الذاتي". ولكن هل هذا المصطلح الجديد يمكنه أن يشهد ظهور "نوع جديد" في الأدب العربي؟يطرح هذا البحث مسألة صحة التخييل الذاتي في الأدب العربي. يقترح الجزء الأول من هذه الأطروحة إعطاء لمحة تاريخية عن تقليد قديم في كتابة الذات منذ القرن التاسع عشر . والجزء الثاني يطرح إنتاج الرواية المعاصرة، ثم يعرض عدداً من الأعمال الروائية التي تقع بين السيرة الذاتية والخيال، ويثير النقاش حول هذه المسألة في النقد العربي والغربي، ثم يثبت الإطار النظري. ويخصّص الجزء الثالث في دراسة الأعمال المختارة لمحمد شكري، وصنع الله إبراهيم ورشيد الضعيف لمراقبة ممارسة كتابة "التخييل الذاتي"، لاستعاب آلياتها ومعرفة دوافعها. ومن هؤلاء المؤلفين لثلاثة ومن الأمثلة المتواجدة في كتاباتهم، نقترح في الخاتمة إقامة نموذج للتخييل الذاتي العربي وتحديد مواضيع من الممكن تطبيقها على نطاق مجموعة واسعة من النصوص الحديثة والمعاصرة

Tese de Doutoramento em Línguas Modernas: Culturas, Literaturas, Tradução, no ramo de Culturas e Literaturas, apresentada ao Departamento de Línguas, Literaturas e Culturas da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra
The present work deals with the representation of trauma and violence in coming-of-age stories written by African-American and Afro-Caribbean women authors in the United States. The kinds of violence explored in this work are related to the post-colonial condition the women protagonists experience, in which racism, sexism, classism, among other kinds of discrimination, are co-created in an intersectional experience of oppression. The titles analyzed in this work are: Lucy (1990), written by Jamaica Kincaid; Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), written by Edwidge Danticat; Bone Black – Memories of Girlhood (1996), written by bell hooks; and God Help the Child (2015), written by Toni Morrison. The Bildungsroman genre serves as the form with which the authors are able to display the different forms of violence experienced during the the process of growing up female and black in the United States, and also in the Caribbean islands of Antigua and Haiti, in the cases of Kincaid and Danticat respectively. The coming-of-age stories written by women, and more specifically by African-American and Afro-Caribbean women, tend to showcase narratives in which the tensions between the protagonists’ self-determination and the influence of social and cultural factors in their development opportunities are negotiated. The genre is adapted and subverted by the authors, deviating from its canonical European origins, becoming a site in which the authors are able to represent different kinds of violence, and the subsequent traumatic consequences caused by it. Through the perspective of the Sociology of Absences (Santos), the analisys focuses on bringing to the fore types of violence that have previously been made invisible by colonialism, as creative work may more clearly see beyond the abysmal line, serving as a form of analysing realities that are often not perceived in their entirety. Literature turns out to be a space of resistance, in which the representation of violence and trauma, to some extent, becomes possible, serving as a tool for the denounciation of violence and trauma, in addition to becoming a tool for the overcoming of trauma.
O presente trabalho lida com a representação do trauma e da violência em narrativas de formação escritas por autoras Afro-Americanas e Afro-Caribenhas nos Estados Unidos. Os tipos de violência explorados pelas neste trabalho estão relacionados com a condição pós-colonial vividas pelas protagonistas, na qual racismo, sexismo, classismo, dentre outras formas de discriminação são co-formadas em uma experiência interserccional de opressão. Os títulos analizados neste trabalho são: Lucy (1990), escrito por Jamaica Kincaid; Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), escrito por Edwidge Danticat; Bone Black – Memories of Girlhood (1996), escrito por bell hooks; e God Help the Child (2015), escrito por Toni Morrison. O gênero literário Bildungsroman serve como a forma com a qual as autoras são capazes de demonstrar as differentes formas de violência vividas pelas protagonistas durante o processo de crescimento como mulheres e negras nos Estados Unidos, e também nas ilhas Caribenhas de Antígua e Haiti, nos casos de Kincaid e de Danticat respectivamente. As narrativas de fomação escritas por mulheres, e mais especificamente por mulheres afro-americanas e afro-caribenhas, tendem a demonstrar percursos em que as tensões entre a autodeterminação das protagonistas e as influências sociais e culturais que incidem sobre as suas oportunidades de desenvolvimento são negociadas. O gênero literário em questão é adaptado e subvertido pelas autoras, desviando-se de sua forma canônica europeia, tornando-se um espaço em que as autoras são capazes de representar diferentes formas de violência e as subsequentes consequências traumáticas causadas pela mesma. Através da perspectiva da Sociologia das Ausências (Santos), a análise concentra-se em trazer para o primeiro plano tipos de violência que foram previamente construídos como invisívies pelo colonialismo, já que a escrita de cariz criativo é capaz de mais claramente ver além da linha abissal, servindo como uma forma de análise de realidades que frequentemente não são inteiramente percebidas. A literatura acaba por ser uma espaço de resistência, no qual a representação da violência e do trauma, até algum ponto, torna-se possível, servindo como ferramenta para a denúncia da violência e do trauma, além de tornar-se uma ferramenta no processo de superação do trauma.

My mini-dissertation gives the autobiography of Talent Nyathi, who was born in rural Zimbabwe in 1961. Talent was unwillingly conscripted into the Zimbabwean Liberation Struggle. On her return to Zimbabwe, she has worked tirelessly for the education of her compatriots. Talent's story casts light on subject-formation in conditions of difficulty, suffering and victimization. Doubly oppressed by her race and gender, Talent has nevertheless shown a remarkable capacity for self-empowerment and the empowerment of others. Her story needs to be heard because it will inspire other women and other S/subjects and because it is a corrective to both the notions of a heroic Struggle and the `victim' stereotype of Africa. Together with Talent's autobiography, my mini-dissertation offers extensive notes that situate her life story in the context of contemporary postcolonial, literary and gender theory and further draws out the significance of her individual `history-from-below'.
English Studies
M.A.