Autofiction
In literary criticism, autofiction describes an autobiography as a genre in which fictional levels of action are interwoven.
The name for this mixer counting technique ( which was of course also used earlier) was coined by the French writer and critic Serge Doubrovsky , who spoke of autofiction (other authors use ego-fiction ) to denote the connection between two actually incompatible narrative forms : the autobiographical and the fictional. A common stylistic feature is the change from the first-person narrator to the third person, although the unity of author , narrator and main character usually remains.
Literary representatives
The genre of auto-fiction is mostly associated with contemporary French literature . In addition to Doubrovsky, these include u. a. Christine Angot , Marguerite Duras , Guillaume Dustan, Alice Ferney , Annie Ernaux , Hervé Guibert , Amélie Nothomb , Olivia Rosenthal , Anne Wiazemsky , Édouard Louis and Vassilis Alexakis . Even Catherine Millet used in their 2001 German published memoirs The Sexual Life of Catherine M. , the technique of autofiction to their sexual experiences in the French swinger scene to describe.
The autobiographical memories of the German-Turkish writer Emine Sevgi Özdamar also describe the experiences of a migrant woman both realistically and fantastically, without being "forced (...) to read them as the author's biography."
The Japanese author Hitomi Kanehara also uses this technique in her novels, one of which bears the original title Ōtofikushon ( オ ー ト フ ィ ク シ ョ ン , 2005) (Sabine Mangold's translation is called Obsession , published in 2008).
definition
However, the concept of autofiction remains problematic. The Swiss writer Ivan Farron emphasizes in an article in the NZZ that it is precisely its vagueness and “ambiguities” that make this term so popular. In addition, it can now be expected from practically every autobiographical, since the decision of what is published and read is made almost exclusively by the "market" : "Less the literary quality of such books than their potential to facilitate direct communication with the reader. or to build up a television audience, an identification that is experienced as cathartic. "
In the same article, Farron also refers to the case of Serge Doubrovsky himself, who in his book Le livre brisé from 1989 addressed his marital problems and described his wife Ilse as depressed and alcoholic. When Ilse Doubrovsky committed suicide, the publication of the book in particular provoked one of "those mini scandals that the literary world is addicted to".
Ultimately, the term cannot be sharply delimited because, in addition to the conscious insertion of fictional elements, the memory may also have been unconsciously falsified, especially if the writing takes place a long time after the relevant events. In this case, the author is convinced that he wrote down actual events and had no fictional intention. For the reader, however, these appear as fictional parts, provided he has the necessary background knowledge.
literature
- Sonja Finck , Claudia Hamm : Self-fiction, foreign fiction and the holes in the text, language in the technical age , SpritZ, 230, Böhlau, Cologne, June 2019, pp. 159 - 171 (conversation about Annie Ernaux 'and Emmanuel Carrère's autofiction)
Individual evidence
- ^ The sexual life of Catherine M , Goldmann, Munich 2001, translated by Gaby Wurster; as a paperback ibid. 2003 ISBN 3-442-45543-X
- ^ Johannes Berning: Writing in the context of school, university, work and everyday life . LIT Verlag Münster, 2006, ISBN 978-3-8258-9260-9 , p. 98 f . ( google.de [accessed on October 11, 2017]).
- ↑ Ivan Farron: Autofiction - a term and its ambiguity (s): The traps of the imagination | NZZ . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . May 30, 2003, ISSN 0376-6829 ( nzz.ch [accessed October 11, 2017]).