Proceedings of the 19th International Academic Conference, Florence

WOMEN AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY

VICTORIA ENCICA

Abstract:

Based on the idea that autobiography (in any form we find it: literary texts, reality-shows, press articles, forums, social networks) is increasingly more attractive to the people all around the world in these latter days, this study tries to demonstrate that there is a special connection between the economic, cultural and intelligence level of a country and its citizens ability to speak in their own names, using the autobiographical expression. More than that it seems that there are some groups, especially women, which prefers the subjective speech for expressing themselves in public. Not only in the Eastern Europe, but all across the continent, there is a special interest into autobiography and intimacy speeches nowadays. Women, less prudish by nature, are finally finding the best way to speak about themselves to the world. The paper will focus on the sphere of literature, but the conclusions it applies to other fields too. Also, this paper intend to present the differences between the autobiography practiced today and the autobiography used by the 20th century writers. Starting from the hypothesis of Ortega y Gasset, who speaks about the intimacy with oneself and about the intimacy with others, we connect the intimacy with the autobiographical discourse because writing at first person is the more appropriate and adequate way to speak about the intus and to show some parts of the hidden dimensions of the self/ego. The people from around the world has different ways to do this. In the second part of this paper, we discuss two interesting theories of some British and Romanian theorists, who says that before 1991 (when the iron curtain falls) a lot of the literatures of the world witnessed the pure autobiographical discourse and after that date it has been seduced by autofiction. Despite these ideas, we believe in an époque of bildungsroman autobiography, specific tot the 19th and 20th centuries, and in an era – which is the contemporary era – characterized by an mock-autobiography.

Keywords: autobiography, contemporary literature, mock-autobiography, intimacy discourse.

DOI: 10.20472/IAC.2015.019.043

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