Authors on authors

• Druk: Kraków, 2012
• Autor: Robert Kusek
• Wydawca: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego

e-ISBN: 978-83-233-8734-3

Among many types of life-writing genres that recently have not only become central to contemporary academic discourse, but also attracted wide readership, the biographical novel deserves special attention. Authors on Authors examines biographical-novel-about-a-writer – a sub-genre of biographical novel which takes a real writer and his/her life story as the subject matter for imaginative exploration. The study identifies all the major examples of the genre written in English between 1990 and 2010, while discussing a variety of approaches and methods used by contemporary authors in rewriting the lives of other authors. An original taxonomy of the genre based on Gerard Genette’s Palimpsests is introduced in this work, following a claim that life and, consequently, life-writing are derivational practices and as such are inherently intertextual and ontologically palimpsestuous. Seen as the most representative and accomplished achievements of the genre, four specific attempts at a biographical-novel-about-a-writer (Author, Author by David Lodge, The Master by Colm Tóibín, The Hours by Michael Cunningham and The Master of Petersburg by J.M. Coetzee) are singled out for an in-depth analysis in this multi-dimensional study which works dialectically across the borders of history, biography, literary criticism, philosophy and textual analysis.

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• Język wydania: angielski
• ISBN: 978-83-233-3380-7
• ISBN druku: 978-83-233-3380-7
• Liczba stron: 169

Acknowledgments   9
Introduction. The Age of Authors, the Age of Biography   11

Chapter One. Biographical-Novel-about-a-Writer – the Genre and Its Hybridity   25
1.1. A Biographical Novel: towards a Definition of the Genre   25
1.2. Hybridity of Biographical Novel: on the Palimpsestuous Nature of the Genre  30
1.2.1. Pastiche   32
1.2.2. Forgery   33
1.2.3. Unfaithful Continuation or Supplement   35
1.2.4. Transposition   36
1.2.4.1. Translation   37
1.2.4.1.1. Translation Simple   38
1.2.4.2. Augmentation/Excision  39
1.2.4.3. Thematic Transformations (Semantic, Diegetic, Pragmatic)   43
1.2.4.4. Transmotivation   47	 
1.2.4.5. Transvaluation   49

Chapter Two. The Many Lives of Henry James   53
2.1. Time and Spirit   53
2.2. Lost in Translation   57
2.3. The Story Won’t Tell   94

Chapter Three. Versions of Virginia Woolf: ‘No More False than They Are True’?   97
3.1. Truth and Falsity of Life-Writing   97
3.2. Stories Re-Told, Lives Re-Lived   100
3.3. ‘There Are Some Stories that Have to Be Retold by Each Generation’   122

Chapter Four. J.M. Coetzee and the Labyrinth of Life-Writing   127
4.1. Authority and Fiction   127
4.2. Rewriting Lives, Retelling Stories   128
4.3. Age of Iron, Age of Disguise   141
4.4. Writing the Other, Writing the Self   150
4.5. The Double   161

Conclusion: Et apres?   165