‘Qui suis-je?’ – ‘Das bin doch ich!’ The poetics of autonarration in Breton and Kurzeck

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Carina Berg

pages: 16-35
First published online: 09 November 2017
Version: 09 November 2017

ABSTRACT
This paper offers a reading of André Breton’s Nadja and Peter Kurzeck’s Das Alte Jahrhundert in the context of autofictional writing. Arguing that the texts’ main focus lies on the figure of the author-narrator, who self-consciously inscribes himself in his work, self-narration can be pragmatically understood as a concept to pinpoint the novels’ underlying poetics which are designed to merge art and life. This inherent transgression of genre boundaries is reflective of the poetological dimension of autofictional writing. Contrasting Kurzeck’s novel series with Nadja makes visible implicit intertextual relations can that link aspects of Kurzeck’s oeuvre with Surrealist poetic practices and allows to historicise the narratological category of autofiction.

Key words: Self-narration, Poetics, Surrealism, Autofiction, Self-reflexivity.

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