In this book Cora Kaplan looks at the politics of ‘Victoriana’ from the 1970s to the present, a politics that emerges from the alternation between nostalgia and critique in fiction, film, biography ...and literary studies. She asks how Jane Eyre can still evoke tears and rage, as well as inspiring imitation and high art, and why Henry James has become fiction’s favourite late Victorian character in the new millennium?
How does a writer approach a novel about a real person? In this new collection of interviews, authors such as Emma Donoghue, David Ebershoff, David Lodge, Colum McCann, Colm Tóibín and Olga Tokarczuk ...sit down with literary scholars to discuss the relationship of history, truth and fiction. Taken together, these conversations enable readers to explore how these issues are negotiated in contemporary world literature.
In this volume, Boldrini examines "heterobiography"-the first-person fictional account of a historic life. Boldrini shows that this mode is widely employed to reflect critically on the historical and ...philosophical understanding of the human; on individual identity; and on the power relationships that define the subject. In such texts, the grammatical first person becomes the site of an encounter, a stage where the relationships between historical, fictional and authorial subjectivities are played out and explored in the 'double I' of author and narrating historical character, of fictional narrator and historical person. Boldrini considers the ethical implications of assuming another's first-person voice, and the fraught issue of authorial responsibility. Constructions of the body are examined in relation to the material evidence of the subject's existence. Texts studied include Malouf's An Imaginary Life, Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang, Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Adair's The Death of the Author, Banti's Artemisia, Vázquez Montalbán's Autobiografía del general Franco. Also discussed, among others: Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian, Tabucchi's The Last Three Days of Fernando Pessoa, Giménez-Bartlett's Una habitación ajena (A Room of Someone Else's).
The twelve essays collected in this work explore the afterlives of nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers in biographical fiction, or biofiction, and its sister genre, the biopic. The essays ...situate these genres in relation to their generic, cultural, and ideological contexts, and are organised into four groups. The first locates the origins of biofiction in the historical novel, and in Modernist experiments in life writing, while the second consists of case studies of biofiction about writers from the long nineteenth century: Charlotte Brontë, Henry James, Constance Fenimore Woolson, and Rupert Brooke. A guest essay by novelist Maggie Gee opens the third group, which analyses the fertile sub-genre of biographical novels about Woolf, while the fourth and final part of the book concerns the related genre of the biopic. The volume is comprised entirely of original commissions, whose authors include postgraduate students, practitioners and specialists in biographical writing. It will appeal to undergraduates and postgraduates on life writing and contemporary literature modules, as well as fans of the featured biographical novelists and their subjects.
Highlighting neo-Victorian biofiction's crucial role in reimagining and augmenting the historical archive, this volume explores the complex ethical consequences of a creative movement of ...historiographic revisionism, combining biography and fiction in a dialectic tension of empathy and voyeuristic spectacle.
Fantasy, fear, and freedom all play a part in A Story of Witchery, a book-length narrative poem by Jennifer Calkins, and newly illustrated by Thor Harris. Here we meet Emily, our “small and weedy” ...protagonist, an orphan complicit (perhaps) in her own abandonment who is caught up, as poet Amy Gerstler writes in her Introduction, in a story “entwined with science facts and twisted clinical fictions.” In language rolling and tripping with spare precision, Calkins makes a modern pilgrim progress into the imagination and the dark world of medicine. Rich and haunting images create a seemingly familiar environment which, like the internal landscape of the protagonist, dissolves only to reform, until finally resolving into a healed whole.
Biographical novels for children constitute an interesting case, as authors employ their creative imagination while combining history and factual descriptions to invite young readers to become part ...of a distant reality rich in social, anthropological and historical significance. This article focuses on the work of Greek writer Kira Sinou titled Anna and Theophano: Princesses Abroad (Άννα και Θεοφανώ, πριγκίπισσες στα ξένα, Κέδρος 2004) and her effort to narrate the life of significant feminine personalities of the Byzantine period in a “truthful” sense, so as to revive literary past-present dialogues. This article aspires to highlight the ways in which the author makes use of the narrative nature of historiography to reveal the Byzantine past to children and adolescents, attempting not only to underline the importance of timeless sociopolitical issues, but also to contribute to the shaping of children’s self-identity and attitudes by using gender stereotypes and critical literacy practices.
Biografski romani za djecu predstavljaju zanimljiv slučaj jer se autori oslanjaju na svoju kreativnu maštu pri kombiniranju povijesti i faktografskih opisa kako bi privukli mlade čitatelje da postanu dio udaljene stvarnosti bogate društvenim, antropološkim i povijesnim značajem. Ovaj je rad usredotočen na roman Anna i Theophano: Princeze u inozemstvu (Άννα και Θεοφανώ, πριγκίπισσες στα ξένα, Κέδρος 2004) grčke spisateljice Kire Sinou i njezino nastojanje da pripovijeda o životima važnih žena iz bizantskoga razdoblja na „istinit“ način kako bi oživjela književne dijaloge prošlosti i sadašnjosti. Cilj je rada istaknuti načine autoričine porabe pripovjedne naravi historiografije kako bi djeci i adolescentima otkrila bizantsku prošlost. Pritom pokušava istaknuti važnost vječnih društveno-političkih pitanja, a također i pridonijeti oblikovanju samoidentiteta djece čitatelja i uspostavljanju njihovih stavova izlažući ih rodno uvjetovanim stereotipima i praksi kritičke pismenosti.
