The narrating-I and the experiencing-I in autobiographical narratives
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| Year of publication | 2018 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Contemporary autobiography studies and narrative psychology claim that there is no clear boundary between the present and the past self: the autobiographical act does not correspond to a description of an already formed self, but rather to a stage of self-creation. Drawing on these discoveries, Martin Löschnigg (in “Postclassical Narratology and the Theory of Autobiography”) suggests that the traditional narratological distinction between the narrating-I and the experiencing-I might be misleading when applied to life writing, as these categories may force an artificial boundary where there really is continuity. While acknowledging the acuity of Löschnigg’s insight, my paper argues that the narrating-I vs. experiencing-I dichotomy retains its relevance when autobiographical texts are examined from a literary point of view rather than a psychological one, that is, as literary works rather than acts of identity construction. To demonstrate how the concept can enhance our understanding of narrative strategies in autobiographical texts and their different effects on readers, I identify several types of relationships between the narrator/teller position and the protagonist/experiencer position. Some autobiographical narratives (e.g. Isherwood’s Christopher and His Kind and Grass’s Peeling the Onion) highlight the difference between these two positions: the narrator distances herself from the protagonist. Texts of this type tend towards self-reflexive, meta-autobiographical commentary and appreciation of the wisdom of hindsight. Another type (e.g. Mary Karr’s memoir trilogy and Martin Walser’s A Gushing Fountain) involves an apparent closing of the gap – the narrator adopts the protagonist’s perspective and invites the reader to immerse in the depicted experience. Other narratives combine distance and closeness, such as Kominsky-Crumb’s comics where the present self’s remarks in voice-over captions contradict or comment on the past self’s perspective represented in the drawings. This double perspective helps the narrator communicate her stance (e.g. feminist views). |
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