The Eluding Self and (Auto)biographical Authority: Delarivier Manley’s Rivella
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Delarivier Manley’s Rivella is an account of the life of both the historical Manley and the fictionalized Manley, Rivella, told by a fictionalized male biographer. It is thus both a biography and an autobiography, but it is an autobiography that claims to be fiction and a fiction that claims to be history. In this engagement with the issues of fiction and truth, story and history, the work raises important questions concerning the nature of the novel in its early formative stage. It challenges at the same time the accepted idea of autobiography as a coherent narration of life experiences that reveal the truth about a consistent identity. I argue that Manley’s oscillation between fact and fiction, truth and falsehood, results in a self-representation in which the self ultimately eludes the biographer/autobiographer. The multiple frames within which the story/history of Rivella/Manley is set undermine the (auto) biographical authority of both the fictional biographer and the author by introducing complex perspectives and attitudes that disrupt the construction of a unified selfhood and point to the ultimate unknowability of the self. In this paper, I explore how Manley problematizes the subject/object of the story/history, and how this raises complex questions regarding the construction of human subjectivity, in which both the early novel and autobiography are deeply engaged.
Abstract
Delarivier Manley’s Rivella is an account of the life of both the historical Manley and the fictionalized Manley, Rivella, told by a fictionalized male biographer. It is thus both a biography and an autobiography, but it is an autobiography that claims to be fiction and a fiction that claims to be history. In this engagement with the issues of fiction and truth, story and history, the work raises important questions concerning the nature of the novel in its early formative stage. It challenges at the same time the accepted idea of autobiography as a coherent narration of life experiences that reveal the truth about a consistent identity. I argue that Manley’s oscillation between fact and fiction, truth and falsehood, results in a self-representation in which the self ultimately eludes the biographer/autobiographer. The multiple frames within which the story/history of Rivella/Manley is set undermine the (auto) biographical authority of both the fictional biographer and the author by introducing complex perspectives and attitudes that disrupt the construction of a unified selfhood and point to the ultimate unknowability of the self. In this paper, I explore how Manley problematizes the subject/object of the story/history, and how this raises complex questions regarding the construction of human subjectivity, in which both the early novel and autobiography are deeply engaged.
참고문헌 (15)
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