The STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI issue article summary

The summary of the selected article appears at the bottom of the page. In order to get back to the contents of the issue this article belongs to you have to access the link from the title. In order to see all the articles of the archive which have as author/co-author one of the authors mentioned below, you have to access the link from the author's name.

 
       
         
    STUDIA PHILOLOGIA - Issue no. 4 / 2005  
         
  Article:   AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL.

Authors:  ALINA PREDA.
 
       
         
  Abstract:  The autobiographical novel seems to have taken over some of the territory abdicated by the ambiguous genre called autobiography; and this is by no means surprising. While autobiography is a subgenre adopted by authors already known, who have published at least one book and distinguished themselves at some other, less controversial form, the autobiographical novel seems to be the subgenre of choice especially in the case of writers new to the literary scene. The similarities that bind the two closely related genres have made the boundaries between autobiography and the autobiographical novel seem vague, flexible, and fluid. In my attempt to assign Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit to a literary genre, I found Philippe Lejeune’s work, The Autobiographical Pact, most useful. Lejeune’s definition clearly shows the difference between the various autobiographical genres, pointing to the fact that it is possible to draw a definitive boundary between them. His classification can easily be put to work in separating autobiography and the autobiographical novel, as well as in settling the debate over how to distinguish one form of autobiographical writing from the others.  
         
     
         
         
      Back to previous page