Fictionally authentic and authentically fictional: Dave Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The paper discusses the ways in which AHWOSG challenges the conventions of autobiographical genres. It relates the book to the rhetorical approach to fictionality by Richard Walsh, James Phelan, and Henrik Skov Nielsen, who regard fictionality as a communicative strategy and a means of engaging with the actual world. AHWOSG employs fictionality not to deceive its readers or evade facts but to achieve a greater degree of authenticity and communicate its message more efficiently. |