Kommentar |
This seminar is dedicated to the study of three contemporary memoirs, all of which make for fascinating (and relatively short) reading matter. We will look at the memoir as a literary genre and observe its capacity to express autobiographical memory which “more than any other determines, denotes, and guarantees our ego” (Harald Welzer). We will discuss the ways in which the memoir can create a coherent narrative of a person’s past and help to make the ever-elusive entity of the self accessible and ‘readable’. Other topics are: the fuzzy narrative boundaries between fact and fiction and the intersections between literary form and content as the memoirists publicly struggle with their personal experiences of loss and mourning, belonging and alienation, and sexuality and gender.
Texts (please buy no others than the editions below): Barnes, Julian. Levels of Life. London: Vintage, 2014. ISBN 978-0-0995-9028-6. O’Faolain, Nuala. Are You Somebody? New York: Holt, 2009. ISBN 978-0-8050-8987-5. Winterson, Jeanette. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? London: Vintage, 2012. ISBN 978-0-0995-5609-1.
Additional texts will be made available in a seminar reader. Please, make sure to have read O’Faolain’s text before the start of term. |