Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer
##common.pageHeaderLogo.altText##

2024: Іншомовна комунікація: інноваційні та традиційні підходи. Випуск 3

MEMORY HERBARISM THROUGH THE PRISM OF THEORY: ARTISTIC STRATEGIES OF J. BARTH, D. HELLER, S. DIXON

DOI
https://doi.org/10.36074/ikitp.monograph-2024.06
Published
2024-08-20

Abstract

The paper examines late postmodern autobiographical prose by focusing on the works of John Barth, Joseph Heller, and Stephen Dixon. It discusses how postmodern writers retextualize life and ontologize text, touching on philosophical concepts such as 'the death of the subject', transgression, fragmentation, deconstruction, desire, and parrhesia. The analysis shows that contemporary autobiographical narrative goes beyond illustrating theoretical ideas; it forges a new format of self-narrative and artistic strategies for revealing and concealing the personal. J. Starobinski's metaphor, used in the title of this article, refers to
J. J. Rousseau's mnemonics and simultaneously encompasses the general literary experience of artistic reproduction of lifetime reality. Conceptual tropes, including prosopopoeia and metaphor, articulate autobiographical experience, intertwining life, theory, and art within the space of an artistic text. This multifaceted interaction between life and creativity shapes the features of autobiographical writing on the cusp of the 21st century.

References

  1. Barth, J. (2001). Coming Soon!!! A Narrative. Boston, N. Y.: Houghton Mifflin Company.
  2. Barth, J. (2012). Final Fridays: Essays, Lectures, Tributes & Other Nonfiction, 1995–2012.
  3. Barth, J. (1995). Further Fridays. Essays, Lectures, and Other Nonfiction 1984-94. N.Y., Toronto, London: Little, Brown and Company.
  4. Barth, J. (1969) Lost in the Funhouse: Fiction for Print, Tape, Live Voice. (LF) New York: Bantam Books.
  5. Barth, J. (2022) Postscripts (or Just Desserts): Some Final Scribblings.
  6. Barth, J. (1984). The Friday Book. Essays and Other Non-fiction. New York: Putnam.
  7. Barthes, R. “S/Z”. (2002). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
  8. Craig, D. M. (2000). Tilting at mortality: narrative strategies in Joseph Heller's fiction. Wayne State University Press.
  9. Dixon, S. (2006). End of I. San Francisco: “McSWEENEE’S”.
  10. Dixon, S. (2002). I. San Francisco: “McSWEENEE’S”.
  11. Dixon, S. (2006). Interview. https://failbetter.com/21/DixonInterview.php
  12. Doubrovsky, S. (Fall,1980) Autobiographie/Vérité/Psychanalyse. L'Esprit Créateur , Vol. 20, No. 3, Autobiography in 20th-Century French Literature P. 87-97. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26283821
  13. Fowles, A. (2005). Joseph Heller-The Novels. Greenwich Exchange.
  14. Hassan, I. (1984). Parabiography: The Varieties of Critical Experience. In V.A. Kramer (Ed.) American Critics at Work: Examinations of Contemporary Literary Theories (pp. 421- 442). Troy, N.Y.: Whitston Publishing Company.
  15. Heller, J. (2000). Portrait of an Artist, as a Young Man. Glasgow: Scribner.
  16. Honcharova, Y., Lipina, V. (2021). Stephen Dixon’s Novels: Autobiographicality as Transgression. Respectus Philologicus, 39 (44), 89–100. https://doi.org/10.15388/RESPECTUS.2020.39.44.79
  17. Jay, G. S. (1990). Paul de Man and the Subject of Literary History. In H. J. Silverman, G. E. Aylesworth (Eds.) The Textual Sublime: Deconstruction and its Differences (pp. 123-138). Albany, NY : State University of New York Press.
  18. Lejeune, F. (1982). The autobiographical conflict. In T. Todorov (Ed.) French literary theory today. A Reader (pp. 192-222). Cambridge, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press, Paris: Edition de la Maison des Scieces de l’Homme.
  19. Libman, D. (2011). Stephen Dixon takes the Fifth. Web.archive.org https://web.archive.org/web/20110615062616/http://www.fifthwednesdayjournal.org/selections/fifth-dixon.shtml
  20. Loureiro, A.G. (2000). The Ethics of Autobiography: Replacing the Subject in Modern Spain. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
  21. Lyotard, Jean-Francois. (1984). The Postmodern Condition. Manchester University Press.
  22. Man, P. De. (1984). Autobiography as De-Facement. In The Rhetoric of Romanticism (pp. 67-82). N.Y.: Columbia University Press.
  23. Man, P. De. (1983). Form and Intent in the American New Criticism. In Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism. 2nd ed.(pp. 20-36). London: Routledge.
  24. Miller, J. Hillis. (2001). Paul de Man as Allergen. In Tom Cohen et al. (Eds.) Material Events: Paul de Man and the Afterlife of Theory (pp. 183-205). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  25. Ortega y Gasset, J. (1972). The Dehumanization of Art. In Velázquez, Goya and the Dehumanization of Art (pp. 65-83). London: Studio Vista.
  26. Paxson, J. J. (2004). Historicizing Paul de Man’s Master Trope Prosopopeia: Belgium`s Trauma of 1940, the Nazi Vollskörper, and Versions of the Allegorical Body Politic. In P. C. Herman (Ed.), Historicizing Theory (pp. 69-98). Albany, New York University Press.
  27. Pinsker, S. (2009). Understanding Joseph Heller. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
  28. Prosopopeia. Oxford English Dictionary. https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=prosopopeia
  29. Starobinski, Jean (1958). Jean-Jacques Rousseau, la Transparence Et L’Obstacle. Plon.
  30. Strehle, Susan. (1992). Fiction in the Quantum Universe. Chappel Hill: North Carolina UP.