CÍMLAP
Dobos István
Autobiographical reading
CONTENTS, PREFACE
Contents
Contents
Preface
Autobiographical Reading
1. Language and Subject
2. Staging the Self
3. The Relationship between the Narrating and the Narrated Autobiographical Self's Encountering the the Inconclusiveness of Self-Interpretation
4. Memory and Identity
5. Inserted Autobiographical Discourses and Self-Interpreting Configurations
6. The Experience of Estrangement
From the "Death" of the Author to the "Resurrection" of the Author
Stereotypes in Autobiographical Reading
Parable and Reminescence the re-writing of the family history (Zsigmond Móricz: The novel of my life)
1. The Scene of Existence of the Autobiographical Self Rhetoric and Representation
2. The Reinstatement and Reproduction of Family History Inserted Discourses and Self-Interpreting Configurations
3. Identity and Cultural Estrangement. The Parabolic Quality of the Narrative
4. The Relationship between the Narrated Autobiographical Self and the Autobiographical Narrator. The Parabolic Quality of Recollection
5. The Division of the Staged Autobiographical Subject
6. The Inter-Replacing Play of Image and Reflection / Representation
7. The Re-Writing of Family History. The Inconclusiveness of Self-Interpretation
The Intertextual Configuration of Autobiographical Writing (László Németh, From gloom into gloom)
1. The Relationship between Title and Text The Staging of the Self
2. Time, Memory, and Self-Identity
3. The Otherness / Strangeness of One's Own Self. The Appropriation of Otherness
4. The Relationship between the Narrator and the Narrated Autobiographical Self
5. Autobiography as Literature about Literature
6. Language and Subject. Ways of Representing the Self in Language
7. Incidents within the Language Establishing the Autobiographical Self
The Rhetoric of Estrangement. (Gyula Illyés: People of the Puszta)
1. The Narrating and the Narrated Selfs
2. Rhetoric and Understanding
Sándor Márai: Confessions of a Middleclass Citizen (Egy polgár vallomásai)
Preface
In my book, I have attempted the elaboration of a system for rereading
20th-century Hungarian autobiographies, by way of putting the emphasis
on theoretical considerations. (From the "Death of the Author" to the
Resurrection of the Author, Stereotypes in Autobiographical Reading) The
major analytical aspects of the Autobiographical Reading focuses on
the language based means of the representation of the Self. (Language
and Subject, Staging the Self, Inter-Replacing Play of Image and
Representation, Relationship between the Narrating and the Narrated
Autobiographical Self, Memory and Identity) The choice of this subject
matter is justified first of all by the fact that the conditions for the
interpretation of autobiographical texts of belletristic value went through
a fundamental change at the turn of the millennium. This development was
due partly to the deliberating of language and subject aspectual insights
prompted by a turn in interpretation possibilities in literary scholarship,
and partly to the postmodern rewriting of the self-interpreting genre. In
this context, it is the destruction and re-creation of binary concepts
related to the genre that prescribes the aspectual framework for the
reading of autobiographies. The legitimacy of the contraposition in
literary works between the factual and the fictitious, between recollection
and imagination, between denominations and the denominated, between
language and reality, between image and representation, and between the
intratextual and extratextual worlds has become questionable.
The theoretical insights of the meaning of autobiography serve, in this
book, as the starting point for the analysis of autobiographical texts. I
will focus upon four paradigmatic personality constructions of Hungarian
autobiography in the 20th century. The choice of Zsigmond Móricz, Gyula
Illyés, Sándor Márai and László Németh as examples is due to the fact, that
their works are representatives, but since their rhetorical strategies are
quite different, make them particularly resistant to a reading that not
follows the stereotypes in interpretations of autobiographical works, I
could argue, that the analytical aspects of my reading approach would be
true for adhere writers.
I wrote the main part of the book during the period when I was invited as a
visiting professor at the University of Jyväskylä by Prof. Lahdelma Tuomo.
I wish to thank his support and I'm indebted to Gergely Dusnoki and Kristóf
Fenyvesi for copyediting.
Budapest, 15. 12. 2008.
Dobos István