ENGLISH LITERATURE

1
ENGLISH LITERATURE CULTURE

• I IS ANOTHER
• AUTOBIOGRAPHY
• ACROSS GENRES
• Camelia Elias

2
Andrei Codrescu (1946)

• emigrated to the US in 1966 from Communist
  Romania
• became a US citizen in 1981
• poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter columnist
  on National Public Radio
• editor of Exquisite Corpse,
• Professor of English at Louisiana State
  University in Baton Rouge.
• Codrescus website
• Sorensens blog

3
the question of audience

• the mother, the other, oneself
• politics of recognition
• auto-biography vs pseudo-biography
• the private is exchangeable

4
the question of genre

• why not calling it a novel?
• consequences private/public
• auto-biography vs. pseudo-biography
• apology

5
the question of memory

• the chicken story
• true ? individual
• false ? collective
• neuter ? significant

6
the question of narrative

• why and how to tell a story
• pragmatic
• epistemological
• the question of narrative alterations
• does it matter that perhaps it wasnt chickens?

7
preface as satire

• is the best mode in which to write to your
  autobiography
• its perceptive
• it deals with serious problems
• it doesnt think that it needs to be serious
  itself as a form
• relies on understatement
• it projects a double vision of the world
• irony exploits the relationship between
  appearance and reality
• it demands fantasy
• it demands an implicit moral standard
• distortion takes the place of displacement

8
Codrescus Triumvirate
9
Vlad Dracula 1431-1476(Vlad Tepes (the Impaler))
10
narrative

• 3rd, 1st pers. singular narrative
• omniscient
• sets up frames (embedded tales)
• events are told in snapshots
• photographs
• Unlike most people I was not born but snapped
  and I was not gestated but developed. Both my
  parents were photographers. And both of them were
  Jewish. They were bad Jews because they were
  photographers. God said, "Thou shalt not make
  graven images," and both of them did.

11
characters character relations

• mythical or legendary characters (Dracula,
  Ionescu, Nadia, Whitman, Rimbaud)
• Mother (a paradox, determinate/indeterminate
  mind, a victim without an audience))
• Father (a mystery, a hero/an idiot)
• Grandma (first story teller)
• Aunt Elena (logic, numbers)
• Friends (primary school, university, the American
  friends)
• Women (Ilse, the gypsy, Kira, Alice, American
  poetesses)
• characters have functions beyond their
  descriptive attributes

12
Setting

• Alba Iulia
• a waiting place
• a storytelling place
• provincial
• hot

13
Setting

• Sibiu
• a place of initiation and learning,
• a multicultural place
• first sexual encounters
• first attempts at writing poetry

14
Setting

• The USA
• a poets place

15
Setting

• passive places vs active places
• stories to watch ? provincial places through
  their valuation of conservatism
• stories to tell ? cosmopolitan through their
  valuation of diversity

16
Identity through language

• divided/homogeneous the protagonist is not
  conscious of the notion of linguistic difference
• kaleidoscope of languages - kaleidoscope of
  multitudes
• interested in languages potential to be
  expressed in poetry
• language enables impersonations

17
Identity through translations

• only one translation is possible freedom
• translate oneself into a version of America
• translation megalomania
• language to language
• place to place
• one to two
• two to zero

18
Identity through naturalization

• files (anagram for life)
• books (The Life and Times)
• aliases
• shoes

19
Themes

• exile (a myth)
• metaphysics of exile (man was thrown out of Eden)
• language
• (natural but also vampirized)
• writing
• enables the co-existence of multitudes
• genre
• story telling

20
Style

• Self-reflexive
• obsession with form
• obsession with definitions memoir,
  autobiography, history
• Playful
• anecdotes
• mixes colloquialisms with high style