Alterity, First-Person Narratives and Memory in Paul Auster’s Works

Mehdi Kochbati

Abstract


If the presence of extracts from the life of the author (Paul Auster) allows us to postulate the “autobiographical” project of the memorial writing, others on the contrary confer it with a fictive project. The use of a stratagem of increased self-distancing and the multiple “mise en abyme” of identities leaves us puzzled as to the existence of an autobiographical scheme specific to Auster’s creation. Through the many forms of auctorial disguises, games of duplication, selfreflective mirroring, identity usurpation and handwritten possession, memorial writing integrates the different autobiographies of others. These are transformed into a functionalized or “real” autobiography of a subject who is a narrator, a character and an author.


Keywords


autobiography; memory; fiction; autobiographical pact; identity; American literature; Paul Auster

References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/lsmll.2016.40.2.17
Date of publication: 2017-01-19 11:01:37
Date of submission: 2017-01-18 10:32:12


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