Autobiographies of Others: Historical Subjects and Literary Fiction

236 Pages·2012·3.52 MB·English

by  Lucia Boldrini

Autobiographies of Others
Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature
1 Testimony from the Nazi Camps 10 Before Auschwitz
French Women’s Voices Irène Némirovsky and the Cultural
Margaret-Anne Hutton Landscape of Inter-war France
Angela Kershaw
2 Modern Confessional Writing
New Critical Essays 11 Travel and Drugs in Twentieth-
Edited by Jo Gill Century Literature
Lindsey Michael Banco
3 Cold War Literature
Writing the Global Confl ict 12 Diary Poetics
Andrew Hammond Form and Style in Writers’ Diaries,
1915–1962
4 Modernism and the Crisis of Anna Jackson
Sovereignty
Andrew John Miller 13 Gender, Ireland and Cultural
Change
5 Cartographic Strategies of Race, Sex and Nation
Postmodernity Gerardine Meaney
The Figure of the Map in
Contemporary Theory and Fiction 14 Jewishness and Masculinity
Peta Mitchell from the Modern to the
Postmodern
6 Food, Poetry, and the Aesthetics Neil R. Davison
of Consumption
Eating the Avant-Garde 15 Travel and Modernist Literature
Michel Delville Sacred and Ethical Journeys
Alexandra Peat
7 Latin American Writers and the
Rise of Hollywood Cinema 16 Primo Levi’s Narratives of
Jason Borge Embodiment
Containing the Human
8 Gay Male Fiction Since Charlotte Ross
Stonewall
Ideology, Confl ict, and Aesthetics 17 Italo Calvino’s Architecture of
Les Brookes Lightness
The Utopian Imagination in an
9 Anglophone Jewish Literature Age of Urban Crisis
Axel Stähler Letizia Modena
18 Aesthetic Pleasure in Twentieth-
Century Women’s Food Writing
The Innovative Appetites of
M.F.K. Fisher, Alice B. Toklas,
and Elizabeth David
Alice L. McLean
19 Making Space in the Works of
James Joyce
Edited by Valérie Bénéjam and
John Bishop
20 Critical Approaches to American
Working-Class Literature
Edited by Michelle M. Tokarczyk
21 Salman Rushdie and Visual
Culture
Celebrating Impurity, Disrupting
Borders
Edited by Ana Cristina Mendes
22 Global Cold War Literature
Western, Eastern and Postcolonial
Perspectives
Edited by Andrew Hammond
23 Exploring Magic Realism in
Salman Rushdie’s Fiction
Ursula Kluwick
24 Wallace Stevens, New York, and
Modernism
Edited by Lisa Goldfarb and Bart
Eeckhout
25 Locating Gender in Modernism
The Outsider Female
Geetha Ramanathan
26 Autobiographies of Others
Historical Subjects and Literary
Fiction
Lucia Boldrini
Autobiographies of Others
Historical Subjects and Literary Fiction
Lucia Boldrini
NEW YORK LONDON
First published 2012
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2012 Taylor & Francis
The right of Lucia Boldrini to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
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registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Boldrini, Lucia.
Autobiographies of others : historical subjects and literary fiction / by
Lucia Boldrini.
p. cm. — (Routledge studies in twentieth-century literature ; 26)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Autobiographical fiction—History and criticism. 2. Biographical
fiction—History and criticism. 3. Historical fiction—History
and criticism. 4. Fiction—20th century—History and
criticism. 5. Biography as a literary form. 6. Characters and
characteristics in literature. 7. Literature and history. I. Title.
PN3448.A8B75 2012
809.3'82—dc23
2011053384
ISBN: 978-0-415-50737-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-11264-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by IBT Global.
To my mother, and the memory of my father
Contents
List of Images xi
List of Abbreviations xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction: The Portrait of a Voice 1
1 Heterobiography and the Utopia of Man 24
2 Heterobiography, Violence, and the Law 49
3 The Madness of the Documentary
and the Aesthetics of the Body 73
4 The Author? In Theory, Dead:
Heterobiography and Responsibility 119
5 The Polluted Swamp:
Heterobiography, Dialogue, and History 149
Conclusions 178
Notes 183
Bibliography 195
Index 213
Images
3.1 Detail from Huff man’s Wolfer. The 2 wheeled outfi t used in
the rough country. 88
3.2 L. A. Huff man, Wolfer. The 2 wheeled outfi t used in the
rough country. 89
3.3 Detail from Grave of Colonel Keogh. 94
3.4 Grave of Colonel Keogh, Custer battlefi eld, Little Big
Horn, Montana, USA. 95
Abbreviations
A Anna Banti, Artemisia, translated by Shirley D’Ardia Caracciolo
(London: Serpent’s Tail, 2004) (Original Italian publication 1947)
AGF Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Autobiografía del general Franco
(Barcelona: Planeta, 1992)
CW Michael Ondaatje, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left
Handed Poems (Toronto: House of Anansi, 1970) Michael
Ondaatje, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (London:
Bloomsbury, 2004)
DA Gilbert Adair, The Death of the Author (London: Minerva,
1993) (Original publication 1992)
Ex Ponto Ovid, Ex Ponto. In Ovid, Tristia; Ex Ponto, 2nd ed., revised by
G. P. Goold, translated by Arthur Leslie Wheeler (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1988)
F Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: The 1818 Text, Contexts, Nine-
teenth-Century Responses, Criticism (New York and London:
Norton, 1996)
FY Mark H. Brown and W. R. Felton, The Frontier Years. L. A. Huff -
man, Photographer of the Plains (New York: Henry Holt, 1955)
GWBE Vintila Horia, God Was Born in Exile. Ovid’s Memoirs at
Tomis. A Novel. Translated by Arthur Lytton Sells (London:
Allen & Unwin, 1961) (Original French publication 1960)
HA Alícia Giménez-Bartlett, Una habitación ajena (Barcelona: Ver-
ticales de Bolsillo, 2008) (Original publication 1997)
IL David Malouf, An Imaginary Life (New York: Braziller, 1978)
LT Peter Ackroyd, The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (London:
Abacus, 1990) (Original publication 1983)
LTD Antonio Tabucchi, The Last Three Days of Fernando Pessoa. In
Antonio Tabucchi, Dreams of Dreams; And, The Last Three Days
of Fernando Pessoa, translated by Nancy J. Peters (San Francisco:
City Lights Books, 1999) (Original Italian publication 1994)
MH Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian, and Refl ections on
the Composition of Memoirs of Hadrian, translated by Grace
Frick (London: Penguin, 1963) (Original French publication 1951)