AUTOFIGURACIONES: DE LA FICCIÓN AL PACTO DE NO FICCIÓN

Partiendo de una concepción del género literario como resultado de casillas vacías que la creación literaria impone a la teoría como desafío, este estudio intenta avanzar de modo diferente al de la conocida como Autoficción, precisando mi propuesta avanzada en 2010 sobre Figuraciones del yo. Entre las que ahora denomino Autofiguraciones enumero algunas muy presentes en la literatura de hoy en las que, al igual que ocurre con los relatos de la Shoah de Primo Levi, desarrollan un pathos por el cual el autor compromete experiencias que piden ser leídas como no ficcionales para alcanzar una lectura feliz. El estudio se refiere a obras recientes de diferentes autores que han partido de las Grief Memoir o libros de duelo (por la muerte de padre, madre o hijos) que sobrepasan con mucho cualquier ambigüedad respecto al dolor originario. La segunda parte del estudio desarrolla la tesis de que no toda invención imaginaria pide ser leída como ficción, y que incluso en pactos autobiográficos que nacen deconstructivos (como los de Barthes o Roth) hay mecanismos de referencia, como las fotos, que quieren evadirse de la cárcel del lenguaje. Tanto la multiplicación de detalles sensoriales como un especial juego con el tiempo de la memoria, ahondan en la misma dirección. A partir del concepto bajtiniano de cronotopo externo preciso que toda decisión sobre Ficción/No ficción en las autofiguraciones debe dirimirse de modo pragmático. Avanzo que en obras como las analizadas hay pactos de no ficción que permiten, al contrario que las ficcionales, que puedan formularse desde el que llamo tu autobiográfico reproches posibles sobre olvidos, silencios o mendacidades. ABSTRACT: Beginning with a conception of the literary genre as a result of empty boxes that literary creation imposes on theory as a challenge, this study aims to advance in a different way from the one known as Autofiction, specifying my prior proposal in 2010 on Figuraciones del yo. Among the ones I now call Autofigurations, I list some very present in today's literature in which, as it happens with the stories of the Shoah by Primo Levi, they develop a pathos by which the author compromises experiences that ask to be read as non-fictional in order to achieve a happy reading. This study refers to recent works by different authors who have started from the Grief Memoirs or books of mourning (for the death of a father, mother or children) that go far beyond any ambiguity regarding the original pain. The second part of the study develops the thesis that not every imaginary invention asks to be read as fiction, and that even in autobiographical pacts that are born deconstructive (like those of Barthes or Roth) there are referential mechanisms, like photos, that want to escape from the prison of language. Both the multiplication of sensory details and a special game with the time of memory go in the same direction. From Bakhtin’s concept of external chronotope, it is clear that any decision on fiction/non-fiction in self-portraits must be made pragmatically. I warn that in works such as those analysed there are non-fiction pacts that allow, unlike fictional works, possible reproaches about forgetfulness, silence or mendacity to be formulated from what I call the autobiographical-you. Abstract: Beginning with a conception of literary genre as the result of empty boxes that literary creation imposes on theory as a challenge, this study attempts to move forward in a different way to that of what is known as Autofiction. Among what I now call Autofigurations, I list some very present in current literature which, starting from the Grief Memoir, develop a pathos on which they ask to be read as non-fictional. The second part of the study develops this thesis that not every imaginary invention asks to be read as fiction, pointing out mechanisms of reference, such as photographs, that want to escape from the prison of language. Based on Bakhtin’s concept of the external chronotope, it is clear that any decision on fiction/non-fiction in self-figurations must be made pragmatically. In works such as those analysed, there are non-fictional pacts which, unlike fictional ones, allow us to formulate, from what I call the autobiographical-you, possible objections to forgetfulness, silences or mendacities.

The ‘Gluttonous Child’ Narrative in Italy and Britain: A Transnational Analysis

This article compares images of food as temptation, and hunger as test, in two samples of late-nineteenth century British and Italian children’s literature. It reads the narratives alongside coeval popular medical manuals on child health, examining recurring descriptions of children as natural gluttons in works dedicated to child nutrition. Putting the select fiction and non-fiction in dialogue with moral, scientific, and nation-building middle-class discourses circulating in both countries, the article finds that the ‘gluttonous child’ narrative was both transnational and transtextual.

Photoromance, she read: Fandom and the politics of Italian media

This article examines Italian non-fiction media productions of the late 1950s and 1960s that represent the photoromance industry and its female fans. I argue that state-controlled and/or privately owned media outlets and their contributors (among them, Cesare Zavattini and Mario Soldati) scapegoated photoromances in defence of moral, social and cultural respectability, but also on the basis of anxieties towards the increasing role played by female audiences in the making of culture. Furthermore, I show that politically engaged documentaries similarly chastised the photoromance industry without necessarily serving the cause of women’s emancipation. Blaming photoromances for the degeneration of Catholic values, for the debasement of working-class culture and for the degradation of consumerist society, all films serve the same purpose of maintaining a patriarchal society’s status quo, of diverging attention from ‘higher’ cultural products and their exploitation of women’s bodies and of minimizing the important role that female fans played in the success of a global market.

DOCUMENTALITY AND ARTISTRY OF “SMALL STORIES” BY V.S. BAEVSKY (BASED ON THE MATERIAL “LIFE AFTER (SMALL STORIES)”)

The article deals with the problem of the ratio of documentary and fiction in a special literary genre of non-fiction based on the work “Life after (small stories)” by the philologist V.S. Baevsky. The study of the genre of non-fiction remains relevant for literary studies, and this problem, studied on the material of V.S. Baevsky's prose, has not previously become a subject for study. Within the framework of the proposed research, it is concluded that the documentary accuracy of historical events, geographical names, and the appeal to real personalities reflected in the work do not deny the artistic authenticity of the work. At the same time, the facts of history, personal biography of the author and his relatives are organically woven into the verbal fabric of the narrative. The family is presented against the background of the most important historical events (war, evacuation, perestroika), which indicates the inextricable connection between the fate of a person and the fate of the country. This allows Baevsky, on the one hand, to analyze his life path, on the other - to show a person of a transitional era and the historical reality in which he found himself. In the work, the author actively turns to literary techniques that promote artistic expressiveness and imagery, create an artistic world of “small stories”.

Functions of Literature

Literature is an open concept and a creative art which expresses human history, experiences, imagination, observations, predictions and suggestions at a particular time in a given society. Either as fiction or non-fiction, literature can be rendered in both spoken and written words. It is often argued whether literature is for itself or the development of the society that produces it. This study, therefore, interrogates how the selected Francophone African novels, namely Sembène Ousmane’s Les bouts de bois de Dieu, Mariama Bâ’s Une si longue lettre, Ferdinand Oyono’s Le vieux nègre et la médaille, Aminata Sow Fall’s La grève des bàttu, Patrick Ilboudo’s Les vertiges du trône and Fatou Keïta’s Rebelle, depict the function of literature. The novelists are selected because of their inclination towards the social transformation paradigm. The purpose of this paper is to raise people’s awareness and mobilize them towards positive change. Based on close reading, the paper is built around Marxist theory which is interested in the class struggle as demonstrated in a literary text, with a view to deconstructing the existing capitalist tendencies in a given society. The findings reveal that the selected novels are focused on the poor conditions socio-politically, economically, culturally and psychologically that exist both during and after the colonial era. The paper concludes that literature helps readers to cope with the socio-cultural, political, economic, religious and other challenges of their immediate as well as remote environments through the process of self-discovery. As such, positive social change is possible through literature.

Między ziemią obiecaną a krainą rozczarowań – profile EUROPY we Wszystkich wojnach Lary Wojciecha Jagielskiego

The aim of the article is to point out and describe the profiles of the concept of EUROPE in Wojciech Jagielski’s non-fiction book All Lara’s Wars. Profiling in ethnolinguistics is a process of creating an individual image (profile) of a particular object. The profiles can be diverse, depending on what kind of aspects are important in shaping a particular subjective vision. Based on the linguistic analysis of the chosen quotes from the book, six profiles of EUROPE have been pointed out: promised land, open home, fortress, package, waiting room and land of disappointment. The common aspect which can be found in all the profiles is the geographical one. However, each profile is shaped differently and is dominated by one of the aspects: living, social or civilisational (cultural). Two of the profiles are positively valued (promised land and open home) and the other four are negatively valued, which leads to the conclusion that the image of EUROPE presented in the book is mostly characterised as pejorative.

Collaboration and Connection

Juvenilia scholarship typically privileges a lone child author writing without adult intervention. This essay explores questions about intergenerational authorship and juvenilia through a focus on Homes: A Refugee Story, a work of “creative non-fiction” produced through the collaboration of Abu Bakr al Rabeeah and his former teacher Winnie Yeung. Homes chronicles the experience of al Rabeeah in Syria prior to his emigration with his family to Canada as a young teen. The essay authors draw on a joint interview they conducted with al Rabeeah and Yeung, who characterized their mode of collaborating as one between the young “storyteller” and adult “writer,” and discussed how they negotiated their roles in light of questions regarding agency, privacy, ethics, and trauma. The essay concludes by suggesting that fluid definitions of child writing and child agency may be particularly important when it comes to trauma narratives.

Reportaż magiczny? Uwagi o "Wszystkich zajęciach Yoirysa Manuela" Adama Kwaśnego

'Wszystkie zajęcia Yoirysa Manuela' [All occupations of Yoirys Manuel] by Adam Kwaśny (2017) is a collection of stories about the inhabitants of the city of Trinidad in Cuba, which can be read as an attempt to look for a new approach in the travel literature and reportage writing. By the use of the techniques typical for magical realism and non-fiction literature at the same time, the work shows the reality of the city from the perspective of its inhabitants, or more precisely: from the perspective of a narrator coming from the outside world, but sharing the beliefs and worldview of the described people.

J.A.A. Joyce’s type of chronotope in Mikhail Shishkin’s non-fiction “Russian Switzerland”

The article is devoted to the comparative analysis of the organisation of spatio-temporal structures in the novel “Ulysses” by James Augustine Aloysius Joyce and the literary-historical guide “Russian Switzerland” by Mikhail Shishkin. The general way of permeability of the boundaries of fiction – non-fiction genres and the reflection of this process in the world and Russian literature of the 20th–21st centuries is investigated. It is proved that for Mikhail Shishkin, as well as for J.A.A. Joyce, everyday life becomes an experimental field, where J.A.A. Joyce's deliberately destroyed time is rethought by the modern author into the category of simultaneity, which allows people and events separated by centuries to be viewed at one point in space. J.A.A. Joyce and Milhail Shishkin think of time as a way of organising events and facts as a spatial one, which allows us to present world history as a creative chaos of events, the expansion of which into the genre of non-fiction makes the narrative strategy more multidimensional, rather than as a system of causes and effects. The two authors are brought together not only by a common literary tradition, but also by an autobiographical understanding of emigration, thanks to which Mikhail Shishkin deliberately builds himself as a mediator between cultures, for whom J.A.A. Joyce’s speech techniques are a self-evident core of the artistic style of the new emigre prose.