Wow! eBook
Authors on Authors
Author(s): Robert Kusek (Author)
- Publisher: Jagiellonian University Press
- Publication Date: 28 May 2013
- Language: English
- Print length: 169 pages
- ISBN-10: 8323333807
- ISBN-13: 9788323333807
Book Description
Among many types of life-writing genres that recently have not only become central to contemporary academic discourse, but also attracted wide readership, the biographical novel deserves special attention. Authors on Authors examines biographical-novel-about-a-writer–a sub-genre of biographical novel which takes a real writer and his/her life story as the subject matter for imaginative exploration. The study identifies all the major examples of the genre written in English between 1990 and 2010, while discussing a variety of approaches and methods used by contemporary authors in rewriting the lives of other authors. An original taxonomy of the genre based on Gerard Genette’s Palimpsests is introduced in this work, following a claim that life and, consequently, life-writing are derivational practices and as such are inherently intertextual and ontologically palimpsestuous. Seen as the most representative and accomplished achievements of the genre, four specific attempts at a biographical-novel-about-a-writer ( Author, Author by David Lodge, The Master by Colm Toibin, The Hours by Michael Cunningham, and The Master of Petersburg by J.M. Coetzee) are singled out for an in-depth analysis in this multi-dimensional study which works dialectically across the borders of history, biography, literary criticism, philosophy, and textual analysis.
Editorial Reviews
Review
The work is an ambitious attempt to tackle the important and current topic of theoretical, historical, and literary criticism. In accordance with the promise made in the title, the author discusses the selection of biographical novels and classifies different variations, based on theoretical thought. — Miroslawa Buchholtz, Professor of English and Director of the English Department at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland.
About the Author
Robert Kusek is a lecturer in the Institute of English Philology at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, as well as culture manager, editor, and translator. He graduated with honours from the Institute of English Philology and the Institute of Journalism and Social Communication at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow. In 2011 he completed his doctoral thesis on biographical-novel-about-a-writer. His research interests include life-writing, poetics of memory and loss, the Holocaust and its representation in culture, postcolonialism, and media. He is also active in intercultural dialogue and holds the position of the Polish Coordinator of the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue Between Cultures at the International Cultural Centre in Krakow.
