TY - BOOK ID - 126503755 TI - Contemporary second- and third-person autobiographical writing : narrating the male self PY - 2023 SN - 1032385049 1032385049 9781032385051 1032385057 9781032385044 1032385057 9781032385051 9781032385044 PB - New York: Routledge, DB - UniCat KW - American prose literature KW - Autobiographical fiction KW - Autobiography KW - English prose literature KW - Narration (Rhetoric) KW - Point of view (Literature) KW - Auster, Paul - 1947 KW - -Barnes, Julian, 1946 KW - -Coetzee, J. M. - 1940 KW - -Rushdie, Salman UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:126503755 AB - This book explores 21st-century uses of the second- and third-person perspective in Anglophone autobiographical narratives by canonical male writers. Through detailed readings of contemporary autobiographical works by Paul Auster, Julian Barnes, J.M. Coetzee, and Salman Rushdie, the study demonstrates the multiple aesthetic, rhetorical, and un/ethical implications of the choice of narrative perspective as well as the uncommon step of articulating the self from a perspective which is not I. Drawing on (rhetorical) narratology and autobiography theory, the book engages with questions and tensions of subjectivity and relationality, the interplay of distance and proximity resulting from the narrative perspective, and its effects on the relationship between autobiographer, text, and reader. In addition, the book traces relevant guiding principles the authors use to navigate their self-narratives in relation to others, such as questions of embodiment, visuality, grief, ethics, and politics. Situating the narratives in their socio-political and cultural context, the book uncovers to what extent these autobiographical narratives reflect the authors' position between self-withdrawal and self-promotion and their response to questions of male agency, self-stylisation, and celebrity status. ER -