Event overview
Lorenzo Marchese and Julia Kritsikokas examine how the narration of life in autofiction acquires different, illusive forms and enables the narration of trauma
Lorenzo Marchese, “A Brief History of Italian Autofiction”
In this talk, I will sketch a brief history of Italian autofiction in the last thirty years, focusing on two main examples: Walter Siti (1947) and Giulio Mozzi (1960).
Serge Doubrovsky's invention of the neologism ‘autofiction’ for his debut novel Fils (1977) aims at a creative breach of the traditional language of autobiography, not too differently from what Roland Barthes does from a very different side in his essayistic, pseudo-autobiographical book Roland Barthes (1975). In both authors, the result is a paradoxical novel where the author, the narrator and the main character apparently correspond, yet the autobiographical model is explicitly shaped in the direction of fiction.
An ‘archaeology’ of Italian autofiction can be detected in novels and illusive non-fiction writings by Mario Soldati, Curzio Malaparte and Guido Piovene, and in the last thirty years an autofictional production has sprung in Italy along with a huge critical debate. In texts by authors such as Rino Genovese, Tiziano Scarpa, Giuseppe Genna, Antonio Scurati, Michele Mari, Andrea Tarabbia, fictional life-writing acquires several, illusive forms: it can look like a strictly realistic memoir and base itself on the unreliability of the narrator, or otherwise include fantastic features that take us away from referentiality; it can also manipulate a wide range of well-established literary genres of the self (autobiography, ghost-story, lyric poetry, testimony, ‘roman à clef’ and so on).
I will try to highlight some of the narrative issues in autofiction through the examination of selected excerpts from Il dio impossibile (2014: this trilogy collects Scuola di nudo, 1994, Un dolore normale, 1999, Troppi paradisi, 2006) by Walter Siti and Il male naturale (1998) by Giulio Mozzi.
Julia Kritsikokas, “The Writing of Trauma in French Women’s Autofiction: Annie Ernaux and Nina Yargekov”
For over thirty years, autofiction has been the main form adopted in self-narrative experiments in France. Women’s writing in particualr has given important contributions to this genre, offering some of the most distinctive autofictional narratives in literary landscape.
Self-narrative in French female authors hosts a huge range of difficult to explore issues and topics. Through the examples of Annie Ernaux and Nina Yargekov, I shall discuss how autofiction is fertile ground for the narration of trauma. The combination of real events and fictional elements allows the practitioners of the genre to respond to difficult issues through literary language. The genre of autofiction perfectly embodies the constant tension between laceration and cure. With the expressive tools provided by self-imagination, what cannot be said directly about one’s own experience finds its way into fiction.
Attendance is free but booking is required to receive a link to attend.
More information on the speakers and the event
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 9 Mar 2023 | 5:30pm - 7:15pm |
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