Autobiography, Fiction and Novel: On the Possibilities of a Genre of the “Novel as Autobiography”

Abstract

The article discusses two writings of two Slovenian authors, Kristalni čas by Lojze Kovačič and Zaznamovana by Nedeljka Pirjevec, both published in the early 1990s to a very favorable reception and public acclaim, despite the fact that they did not have the then very trendy features of postmodernism in literature. The reading audience mainly accepted the two generically mixed works as novels; however, their synthetic genericity also corresponds to nonfictional autobiography. Taking into consideration the mutual interaction between genres in the two writings, the author first discusses the suitability of generic terms such as “autobiographical novel” or “fictional autobiography”, and establishes that they do not appropriately refer to either of the two texts. They do not sufficiently emphasize the referentiality in them and the relative restrictions of imagination that go with the ethics of autobiography. – The discussion of generic classifications is further complemented by some theoretical issues concerning relations between fiction, reality and autobiography, and autobiographical referentiality as studied within the theory of autobiography and of fiction. A short historical outline of reflection on autobiography is used to illustrate the epistemological uncertainty of autobiography. It was revealed through the problematization of the basic conventionally established generic criteria, and culminated into the deconstructionist “de-facement” of autobiography in Paul de Man, that is into his re-classification of the genre into a paradigm of writing. The examples of Bourdieu, Eco, Iser and Sill are then used to illustrate certain theoretical arguments against the dichotomy of reality and fiction in autobiography, and also to emphasize the inter-subjectivity, or rather, the key role of the reader in detecting the different degrees and nuances of how the two are intertwined; this provides a general theoretical basis for the observation and description of their interaction in autobiographical texts. – The author then argues for the inclusion of Kristalni čas and Zaznamovana into a new generic class, a “novel as autobiography”. It would adopt the key features of autobiography on modal, content and partly formal levels, and derive regulative rules from modernist (autobiographical) novels. The application of a pragmatic model for distinguishing between fiction and non-fiction, as developed by Nickel-Bacon, Groeben and Schreier, supports the inclusion of the two novels in the new generic class. The author also discusses the texts within the wider context of Slovene literature of the second half of the 20^th century. She finds parallels with the autobiographical writings of the so-called “post-war critical generation” of Slovene writers, and concludes the article by trying to indicate the possibilities for a further verification of their genre analogies and specifics within the global context of postmodern literature.