Dodging the Literary Undertaker – Biographic Metafiction in Hanif Kureishi’s The Last Word
Hanif Kureishi’s 2014 novel, The Last Word, involves most of the author’s idiosyncratic themes, such as ethnicity, racism, sexual identity, examination of interpersonal relationships and the crucial role of the creative imagination in human life. Its focal concern, however, is to explore the process...
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Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1515/pjes-2017-0007 |
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doaj-010f778317274b3c93f20e532b73c5ca2021-09-05T13:59:45ZengSciendoPrague Journal of English Studies2336-26852017-07-016110512210.1515/pjes-2017-0007pjes-2017-0007Dodging the Literary Undertaker – Biographic Metafiction in Hanif Kureishi’s The Last WordChalupský Petr0Associate Professor at the Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Education, Charles University, Prague, Czech RepublicHanif Kureishi’s 2014 novel, The Last Word, involves most of the author’s idiosyncratic themes, such as ethnicity, racism, sexual identity, examination of interpersonal relationships and the crucial role of the creative imagination in human life. Its focal concern, however, is to explore the process of writing a literary biography of a living person and the character and dynamics of the relationship between the biographer and his subject - a writer. As such, the novel can be taken as being representative of biographic metafiction, a subcategory of historiographic metafiction, which, following the postmodernist questioning of our ability to know and textually represent historical truth, presents biographic writing critically or even mockingly, rendering its enthusiastic practitioners’ efforts with ironic scepticism. The aim of this article is to present The Last Word as a particular example of biographic metafiction that has all the crucial features of this genre, yet which differs from its predecessors through the complexity and thoroughness of its portrayal of the biographer-biographee relationship.https://doi.org/10.1515/pjes-2017-0007hanif kureishithe last wordbiographybiographic metafictionhistoriographic metafictionromances of the archive |
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DOAJ |
language |
English |
format |
Article |
sources |
DOAJ |
author |
Chalupský Petr |
spellingShingle |
Chalupský Petr Dodging the Literary Undertaker – Biographic Metafiction in Hanif Kureishi’s The Last Word Prague Journal of English Studies hanif kureishi the last word biography biographic metafiction historiographic metafiction romances of the archive |
author_facet |
Chalupský Petr |
author_sort |
Chalupský Petr |
title |
Dodging the Literary Undertaker – Biographic Metafiction in Hanif Kureishi’s The Last Word |
title_short |
Dodging the Literary Undertaker – Biographic Metafiction in Hanif Kureishi’s The Last Word |
title_full |
Dodging the Literary Undertaker – Biographic Metafiction in Hanif Kureishi’s The Last Word |
title_fullStr |
Dodging the Literary Undertaker – Biographic Metafiction in Hanif Kureishi’s The Last Word |
title_full_unstemmed |
Dodging the Literary Undertaker – Biographic Metafiction in Hanif Kureishi’s The Last Word |
title_sort |
dodging the literary undertaker – biographic metafiction in hanif kureishi’s the last word |
publisher |
Sciendo |
series |
Prague Journal of English Studies |
issn |
2336-2685 |
publishDate |
2017-07-01 |
description |
Hanif Kureishi’s 2014 novel, The Last Word, involves most of the author’s idiosyncratic themes, such as ethnicity, racism, sexual identity, examination of interpersonal relationships and the crucial role of the creative imagination in human life. Its focal concern, however, is to explore the process of writing a literary biography of a living person and the character and dynamics of the relationship between the biographer and his subject - a writer. As such, the novel can be taken as being representative of biographic metafiction, a subcategory of historiographic metafiction, which, following the postmodernist questioning of our ability to know and textually represent historical truth, presents biographic writing critically or even mockingly, rendering its enthusiastic practitioners’ efforts with ironic scepticism. The aim of this article is to present The Last Word as a particular example of biographic metafiction that has all the crucial features of this genre, yet which differs from its predecessors through the complexity and thoroughness of its portrayal of the biographer-biographee relationship. |
topic |
hanif kureishi the last word biography biographic metafiction historiographic metafiction romances of the archive |
url |
https://doi.org/10.1515/pjes-2017-0007 |
work_keys_str_mv |
AT chalupskypetr dodgingtheliteraryundertakerbiographicmetafictioninhanifkureishisthelastword |
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