Description
Book SynopsisBiofiction: An Introduction provides readers with the history, origins, evolution, and legitimization of biofiction, suggesting potential lines of inquiry, exploring criticisms of the literary form, and modeling the process of analyzing and interpreting individual texts. Written for undergraduate and graduate students, this volume combines comprehensive coverage of the core foundations of biofiction with contemporary and lively debates within the subject. The volume aims to confront and illuminate the following questions:
When did biofiction come into being?
What forces gave birth to it?
How does it uniquely function and signify?
Why has it become such a dominant aesthetic form in recent years?
This introduction will give readers a framework for evaluating specific biofictions from writers as varied as Friedrich Nietzsche, George Moore, Zora Neale Hurston, William Styron, Angela Carter, Joyce Carol Oates, and Colm Tóibín, thus enabling
Table of Contents
Introduction I. The Nineteenth Century Origins 1. The Art of Agential Living 2. Portraits of Whom? II. Literature, Cultural Critique, and Political Liberation 3. Biofiction as Social Critique 4. The Irish, the Unslave Trade, and the Decolonization of the Mind 5. The 1930s and the First Surge in Biofiction III. Literary Debates 6. The Assault on Biofiction 7. The William Styron Controversy 8. Postmodernism’s Historiographic Metafiction or Biofiction’s “Truth” Proposals? 9. John Edgar Wideman on the Ethics of Fictionalizing a Life in Biofiction IV. The Uncanny Power of Biofiction 10. Biofiction as Cultural Intervention: The Case of Sally Hemings 11. The 1990s: The Decade of Biofiction’s Official Legitimization and Dominance 12. The Transformative Powers of Biofiction for Students: A Case Study of David Ebershoff’s The Danish Girla
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I.
The Nineteenth Century Origins
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- The Art of Agential Living
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- Portraits of Whom?
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Figure One
Figure Two
II.
Literature, Cultural Critique, and Political Liberation
- Biofiction as Social Critique
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- The Irish, the Unslave Trade, and the Decolonization of the Mind
-
- The 1930s and the First Surge in Biofiction
-
III.
Literary Debates
- The Assault on Biofiction
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- The William Styron Controversy
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- Postmodernism’s Historiographic Metafiction or Biofiction’s "Truth" Proposals?
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- John Edgar Wideman on the Ethics of Fictionalizing a Life in Biofiction
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IV.
The Uncanny Power of Biofiction
- Biofiction as Cultural Intervention: The Case of Sally Hemings
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- The 1990s: The Decade of Biofiction’s Official Legitimization and Dominance
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- The Transformative Powers of Biofiction for Students: A Case Study of David Ebershoff’s The Danish Girl
