Arnaud Schmitt

Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle: A Real Life in a Novel

ABSTRACT In this study of Karl Ove Knausgaards My Struggle, the authors theorize what paratextual information does to ones reading, especially in autobiography-informed literature. Although My Struggle can be read both as memoir and novel, and even as autofiction, Knausgaard is aiming at a higher truth, where the genre label does not undermine the autobiographical quest but supports it.

From Autobiographical Act to Autobiography

ABSTRACT As autobiographical practices constantly branch out into new uncharted territories (social media, identity technologies, etc.), autobiography and more generally life writing become less and less centralised, and also less and less literary. This presents scholars working in the field with new theoretical hurdles and one recurring question: this might be autobiographical, but is this an autobiography? Indeed, these ever-growing autobiographical acts penetrating every nook and cranny of the Internet certainly are autobiographical, but can they be considered, or even studied, as actual autobiographies? The present article tries to tackle these shifting frontiers by differentiating between autobiographical acts and autobiography, notably by pointing out that the latter only exists, as opposed to the former, by means of a triangular structure of communication: an author, an audience and a publicised rhetorical system.