«Autre»-Biography: Poetics of Self in J. M. Coetzee's Fictionalized Memoirs

ISBN-13: 9783631671696 / Angielski / Twarda / 2016 / 286 str.

Angela Muller

Opis

This study explores the poetics and politics of self in J. M. Coetzee's autre-biographical works Scenes from Provincial Life. The author provides a detailed analysis of Coetzee's conception of self in his fictionalized memoirs, as well as of philosophical, aesthetic and political implications of autre-biography. She reads these works as literary figurations of an estranged self, maintaining that they engage with deeply historical but also universal questions of the relation between self and power. Coetzee's fictionalized memoirs, she argues, are thus not merely dramatizations of the inherent elusiveness of the self but a critique of systems and discourses of normativization and oppression.

Spis treści

Concept of «autre»-biography in J. M. Coetzee's trilogy of fictionalized memoirs «Boyhood» (1997), «Youth» (2002), and «Summertime» (2009) - The poetics and politics of self - Literary figuration of a variegated self - Sense of identity, alterity and unbelonging

O autorze

Angela Müller studied German and English Literature at the Goethe University in Frankfurt and the University of Birmingham. She obtained her PhD in English Literary and Cultural Studies at both Gießen University and the Catholic University of Lisbon.