Stories and portraits of the self / edited by Helena Carvalhão Buescu, João Ferreira Duarte.

• Superior document: Internationale Forschungen zur allgemeinen und vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft ; 115
• TeilnehmendeR: Buescu, Helena Carvalhão.; Duarte, João Ferreira, 1947-
• Year of Publication: 2007
• Language: English
• Series: Internationale Forschungen zur allgemeinen und vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft ; 115.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (335 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

In contemporary societies privatization has long ceased to be just an economic concept; rather, it must increasingly be made to refer to the ongoing shrinking of the public space under the impact of the representation of individual lives and images, which cuts across all discourses, genres and media to become one of the primary means of production of culture. This volume is intended to cover such an historical, social and intellectual ground, where self-representation comes to the fore. Targeting mostly an academic readership but certainly also of interest to the general educated public, it collects a wide range of essays dealing with diverse modes of life writing and portraying from a variety of perspectives and focusing on different historical periods and media. It thus offers itself as a major contribution to a better understanding of the world we live in: its past legacy and present configuration.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- Introduction: Signposts of the Self in Modernity -- The Self as a Work of Art: Proust’s Scepticism / Christopher Prendergast -- (Re-)Constructing, (Re-)Membering Postcolonial Selves / Paulo de Medeiros -- ‘Doing Identity’ in Fiction: Identity Construction as a Dialogue between Individuals and Cultural Narratives / Aleksandra Podsiadlik -- Self-Representation and Temporality: ‘Parabasis’ in Guimarães Rosa’s Grande Sertão: Veredas / Clara Rowland -- New Man: Marie Kessels’ Inner Portrait of a Writing Self / Daniël Rovers -- Good Intentions, Ethical Commitment, and Impersonal Poetry: The Work of Gerrit Kouwenaar / Gaston Franssen -- ‘For-Getting’ Plural Selves: Narrative and Identity in Caryl Phillips’s A Distant Shore / Jan Rupp -- The Straitjacket of Normality. The Interaction with the Psychiatrist in Maurits Dekker’s Waarom ik niet krankzinnig ben / Lars Bernaerts -- The Self’s Struggle for Recognition: August Strindberg and the Other / Lars Dalum Granild -- Unshaded Shadows: Performances of Gender in Emily Dickinson and Luiza Neto Jorge / Marinela Freitas -- The Identity Paradigm / Peter Brooks -- The Global I / Roland Greene -- Staining the Past with Ink in Lorenzo Da Ponte’s Memorie (1830): The Fallacies of Autobiographical ‘Writing’ / Davy Van Oers -- Between Autobiography and Fiction: Narrating the Self in Gabriel García Márquez’s Vivir para contarla / Eli Park Sorensen -- The Passion of Lena Christ: From Fictionalized Autobiography to Biographical Novel / Mirjam Truwant -- Dreams in the Mirror: George Steiner by George Steiner / Ricardo Gil Soeiro -- Reading W. G. Sebald with Alberto Giacometti / Timothy Mathews -- The Impossible Self-Portrait / Paula Morão -- Between Literature and the Visual Arts: Portraits of the Self in William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, and Fernando Pessoa / Anna Viola Sborgi -- Photography and Shadow-Writing: Henry James’s Revisions of the Self in the New York Edition / Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen -- Consumed by the Audience. Inhibition, Fear, and Anxiety in the Oeuvre of Bruce Nauman / Patrick Van Rossem -- There Was Something about Mary: Mary Pickford’s Perfect ‘Little American’ / Anke Brouwers -- Paint it Red: Death Artistry as a Portrait of the Self / Verena-Susanna Nungesser.