Max Saunders
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199579761
- eISBN:
- 9780191722882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579761.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter argues that the notion of ‘aesthetic autobiography’, attached by Suzanne Nalbantian to the modernist autobiographical Künstlerroman, in fact originates in the way earlier writers such as ...
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This chapter argues that the notion of ‘aesthetic autobiography’, attached by Suzanne Nalbantian to the modernist autobiographical Künstlerroman, in fact originates in the way earlier writers such as Ruskin and Gosse develop literary forms to construct their lives as aesthetically motivated. Ruskin's impressionist autobiography is investigated as a precursor of early twentieth‐century literary autobiographies by James, Conrad and Ford. Particular attention is paid to time, memory, impressions, and reading. The chapter proposes a changing view of ‘mediation’ through the period, arguing that Realism denies the mediation of reality by art; impressionism accepts the mediation of reality, but locates it in the process of perception and consciousness; modernism combines this interest in phenomenology with an awareness of how language or form mediates between the subject and the object; whereas postmodernism is founded on a denial, or suppression, of the objectivity of the object. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Proust (of all modernists the most indebted to Ruskin, and a sophisticated analyst of impressionism), from the rejection of biography in Contre Sainte‐Beuve to the fictionalization of autobiography in A la recherche. The essay on Ruskin, ‘On Reading’, is used to show how as for Ruskin autobiography is an act of reading, for Proust reading is an act of autobiography. Ruskinian impressionism is thus seen as also anticipating the modernist fictionalized auto/biography discussed in Part II.Less
This chapter argues that the notion of ‘aesthetic autobiography’, attached by Suzanne Nalbantian to the modernist autobiographical Künstlerroman, in fact originates in the way earlier writers such as Ruskin and Gosse develop literary forms to construct their lives as aesthetically motivated. Ruskin's impressionist autobiography is investigated as a precursor of early twentieth‐century literary autobiographies by James, Conrad and Ford. Particular attention is paid to time, memory, impressions, and reading. The chapter proposes a changing view of ‘mediation’ through the period, arguing that Realism denies the mediation of reality by art; impressionism accepts the mediation of reality, but locates it in the process of perception and consciousness; modernism combines this interest in phenomenology with an awareness of how language or form mediates between the subject and the object; whereas postmodernism is founded on a denial, or suppression, of the objectivity of the object. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Proust (of all modernists the most indebted to Ruskin, and a sophisticated analyst of impressionism), from the rejection of biography in Contre Sainte‐Beuve to the fictionalization of autobiography in A la recherche. The essay on Ruskin, ‘On Reading’, is used to show how as for Ruskin autobiography is an act of reading, for Proust reading is an act of autobiography. Ruskinian impressionism is thus seen as also anticipating the modernist fictionalized auto/biography discussed in Part II.
Max Saunders
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199579761
- eISBN:
- 9780191722882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579761.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter examines the converse displacement to that considered in Chapters 3 and Chapter 4, looking instead at cases where fiction‐writers colonize the forms of life‐writing, producing a variety ...
More
This chapter examines the converse displacement to that considered in Chapters 3 and Chapter 4, looking instead at cases where fiction‐writers colonize the forms of life‐writing, producing a variety of fake diaries, journals, biographies, and autobiographies. It takes a different approach to most of the other chapters, consisting of brief accounts of many works rather than sustained readings of a few. A taxonomy of modern engagements with life‐writing is proposed. The chapter moves on to discuss Galton's notion of ‘composite portraiture’ as a way of thinking about the surprisingly pervasive form of the portrait‐collection. The main examples are from Ford, Stefan Zweig, George Eliot, Hesketh Pearson, Gertrude Stein, Max Beerbohm and Arthur Symons; Isherwood and Joyce's Dubliners also figure. Where Chapters 3 and Chapter 4 focused on books with a single central subjectivity, this chapter looks at texts of multiple subjectivities. It concludes with a discussion of the argument that multiple works — an entire oeuvre — should be read as autobiography.Less
This chapter examines the converse displacement to that considered in Chapters 3 and Chapter 4, looking instead at cases where fiction‐writers colonize the forms of life‐writing, producing a variety of fake diaries, journals, biographies, and autobiographies. It takes a different approach to most of the other chapters, consisting of brief accounts of many works rather than sustained readings of a few. A taxonomy of modern engagements with life‐writing is proposed. The chapter moves on to discuss Galton's notion of ‘composite portraiture’ as a way of thinking about the surprisingly pervasive form of the portrait‐collection. The main examples are from Ford, Stefan Zweig, George Eliot, Hesketh Pearson, Gertrude Stein, Max Beerbohm and Arthur Symons; Isherwood and Joyce's Dubliners also figure. Where Chapters 3 and Chapter 4 focused on books with a single central subjectivity, this chapter looks at texts of multiple subjectivities. It concludes with a discussion of the argument that multiple works — an entire oeuvre — should be read as autobiography.
Max Saunders
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199579761
- eISBN:
- 9780191722882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579761.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter develops the earlier discussions of life‐writings by fictional narrators to consider sustained acts of creative impersonation: works entirely (or almost entirely) presented as written by ...
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This chapter develops the earlier discussions of life‐writings by fictional narrators to consider sustained acts of creative impersonation: works entirely (or almost entirely) presented as written by imaginary authors. It discusses Fernando Pessoa's practice of heteronymity. In this context a surprising reading of Joyce's Portrait is proposed, building on the presence in the work of Stephen Dedalus' writings (poem, journal etc.), to suggest that the entire book might be read as not just a case of free indirect style, with Joyce rendering Stephen's consciousness, but as possibly Joyce's impersonation of the autobiographical book Stephen might have written. Italo Svevo's Confessions of Zeno is proposed as a comparable example of a fictionally authored self‐portrait.Less
This chapter develops the earlier discussions of life‐writings by fictional narrators to consider sustained acts of creative impersonation: works entirely (or almost entirely) presented as written by imaginary authors. It discusses Fernando Pessoa's practice of heteronymity. In this context a surprising reading of Joyce's Portrait is proposed, building on the presence in the work of Stephen Dedalus' writings (poem, journal etc.), to suggest that the entire book might be read as not just a case of free indirect style, with Joyce rendering Stephen's consciousness, but as possibly Joyce's impersonation of the autobiographical book Stephen might have written. Italo Svevo's Confessions of Zeno is proposed as a comparable example of a fictionally authored self‐portrait.
Mhairi Pooler
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781781381977
- eISBN:
- 9781786945242
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781781381977.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Writing Life offers a revisionary exploration of the relationship between an author’s life and art. By examining the self-representation of authors across the schism between Victorianism and ...
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Writing Life offers a revisionary exploration of the relationship between an author’s life and art. By examining the self-representation of authors across the schism between Victorianism and Modernism via the First World War, this study offers a new way of evaluating biographical context and experience in the individual creative process at a critical point in world and literary history. Writing Life is also the story of four literarily and personally interconnected writers – Edmund Gosse, Henry James, Siegfried Sassoon and Dorothy Richardson – and how and why they variously adapted the model of the German Romantic Künstlerroman, or artist narrative, for their autobiographical writing, reimagining themselves as artist-heroes. By appropriating key features of the genre to underpin their autobiographical narratives, Writing Life examines how these writers achieve a form of life-writing that is equally a life story, artist’s manifesto, aesthetic treatise and modern autobiographical Künstlerroman. Pooler argues that by casting their autobiographical selves in this role, Gosse, James, Sassoon and Richardson shift the focus of their life-stories towards art and its production and interpretation, each one conducting a Romantic-style conversation about literature through literature as a means of reconfirming the role of the artist in the face of shifting values and the cataclysm of the Great War.Less
Writing Life offers a revisionary exploration of the relationship between an author’s life and art. By examining the self-representation of authors across the schism between Victorianism and Modernism via the First World War, this study offers a new way of evaluating biographical context and experience in the individual creative process at a critical point in world and literary history. Writing Life is also the story of four literarily and personally interconnected writers – Edmund Gosse, Henry James, Siegfried Sassoon and Dorothy Richardson – and how and why they variously adapted the model of the German Romantic Künstlerroman, or artist narrative, for their autobiographical writing, reimagining themselves as artist-heroes. By appropriating key features of the genre to underpin their autobiographical narratives, Writing Life examines how these writers achieve a form of life-writing that is equally a life story, artist’s manifesto, aesthetic treatise and modern autobiographical Künstlerroman. Pooler argues that by casting their autobiographical selves in this role, Gosse, James, Sassoon and Richardson shift the focus of their life-stories towards art and its production and interpretation, each one conducting a Romantic-style conversation about literature through literature as a means of reconfirming the role of the artist in the face of shifting values and the cataclysm of the Great War.
Mhairi Pooler
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781781381977
- eISBN:
- 9781786945242
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781781381977.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
The introduction’s title is taken from a quote by Henry James that underlines the book’s focus on the self-theorising artist: the idea that autobiographical writing shows the author’s mirrored ...
More
The introduction’s title is taken from a quote by Henry James that underlines the book’s focus on the self-theorising artist: the idea that autobiographical writing shows the author’s mirrored reflection as well as an examination of the reflective surface itself. This idea is introduced alongside other key themes of the book, including the concern with genre, especially the mixed genre of ‘creative autobiography’ and how it compares with the Künstlerroman. The choice of authors studied and their interconnections are explained. It is described how each of the works focused on is a response to the moment of its composition – to the new century, to the shock of the First World War, to the experiments in self-expression or to the uncertainty of the interwar years – making Hans Georg Gadamer’s notion of the ‘historical horizon’ important to the study. This discussion dwells on Virginia Woolf’s idea that ‘human character changed’ in 1910.Less
The introduction’s title is taken from a quote by Henry James that underlines the book’s focus on the self-theorising artist: the idea that autobiographical writing shows the author’s mirrored reflection as well as an examination of the reflective surface itself. This idea is introduced alongside other key themes of the book, including the concern with genre, especially the mixed genre of ‘creative autobiography’ and how it compares with the Künstlerroman. The choice of authors studied and their interconnections are explained. It is described how each of the works focused on is a response to the moment of its composition – to the new century, to the shock of the First World War, to the experiments in self-expression or to the uncertainty of the interwar years – making Hans Georg Gadamer’s notion of the ‘historical horizon’ important to the study. This discussion dwells on Virginia Woolf’s idea that ‘human character changed’ in 1910.
Mhairi Pooler
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781781381977
- eISBN:
- 9781786945242
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781781381977.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Chapter 1 provides a detailed discussion of the book’s key ideas, beginning with the importance of the author’s own literary apprenticeship as a reader for the writer s/he will become, starting with ...
More
Chapter 1 provides a detailed discussion of the book’s key ideas, beginning with the importance of the author’s own literary apprenticeship as a reader for the writer s/he will become, starting with the ideas of Emerson on influence and reading. The section ‘Tradition and Inheritance: the Künstlerroman’ provides an in-depth history of the German Romantic genre and its relevance for the creative autobiographies studied in the following chapters. It compares the specific form of the artist novel with the Bildungsroman and discusses the meaning and relevance of the term Bildung and the idea of apprenticeship. The section ‘Influence (Inflowing)’ explores the idea of literary inheritances and Harold Bloom’s notion of the anxiety of influence. It examines how the German genre influenced British Romanticism and twentieth-century life-writing, highlighting the pliability of generic forms, and further how the author’s technical skill in genre mixing displays an understanding of their art form and the quality of their imagination.Less
Chapter 1 provides a detailed discussion of the book’s key ideas, beginning with the importance of the author’s own literary apprenticeship as a reader for the writer s/he will become, starting with the ideas of Emerson on influence and reading. The section ‘Tradition and Inheritance: the Künstlerroman’ provides an in-depth history of the German Romantic genre and its relevance for the creative autobiographies studied in the following chapters. It compares the specific form of the artist novel with the Bildungsroman and discusses the meaning and relevance of the term Bildung and the idea of apprenticeship. The section ‘Influence (Inflowing)’ explores the idea of literary inheritances and Harold Bloom’s notion of the anxiety of influence. It examines how the German genre influenced British Romanticism and twentieth-century life-writing, highlighting the pliability of generic forms, and further how the author’s technical skill in genre mixing displays an understanding of their art form and the quality of their imagination.
Mhairi Pooler
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781781381977
- eISBN:
- 9781786945242
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781781381977.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
In A Small Boy and Others and Notes of a Son and Brother Henry James depicts an apprenticeship in the conversion of impressions into art. By closely paralleling the model of the German Romantic ...
More
In A Small Boy and Others and Notes of a Son and Brother Henry James depicts an apprenticeship in the conversion of impressions into art. By closely paralleling the model of the German Romantic Künstlerroman, James shows that the complex art of life is also a reflection of his broader artistic programme. The discussion focusses on James’s concept of the ‘fostered imagination’ – the way in which his surroundings, experience and key relationships (e.g. with the painter John LaFarge) shaped his creative development. This chapter concludes that the Bildungsreise or apprenticeship journey at the heart of James’s autobiographical volumes bears witness to and enacts the conversion of a small boy’s quiet observations into the aesthetic manifesto of the mature master. By subtly destabilising the genre with his slight deviations from the traditional model, James casts himself as an artist-hero aware of the constructed nature of personal and public identity, and he skews the focus of his narrative away from self-confession towards art. The Künstlerroman provides James with the means of reframing the increasingly problematic autobiographical premise of a knowable self, allowing him to pursue his quest clothed in the armour of poetic relations.Less
In A Small Boy and Others and Notes of a Son and Brother Henry James depicts an apprenticeship in the conversion of impressions into art. By closely paralleling the model of the German Romantic Künstlerroman, James shows that the complex art of life is also a reflection of his broader artistic programme. The discussion focusses on James’s concept of the ‘fostered imagination’ – the way in which his surroundings, experience and key relationships (e.g. with the painter John LaFarge) shaped his creative development. This chapter concludes that the Bildungsreise or apprenticeship journey at the heart of James’s autobiographical volumes bears witness to and enacts the conversion of a small boy’s quiet observations into the aesthetic manifesto of the mature master. By subtly destabilising the genre with his slight deviations from the traditional model, James casts himself as an artist-hero aware of the constructed nature of personal and public identity, and he skews the focus of his narrative away from self-confession towards art. The Künstlerroman provides James with the means of reframing the increasingly problematic autobiographical premise of a knowable self, allowing him to pursue his quest clothed in the armour of poetic relations.
