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Semi-autobiographical Novel
An autobiographical novel is a form of novel using autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fictive elements. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction. Because an autobiographical novel is partially fiction, the author does not ask the reader to expect the text to fulfill the "autobiographical pact".Philippe Lejeune"Autobiographical Pact," pg. 19 Names and locations are often changed and events are recreated to make them more dramatic but the story still bears a close resemblance to that of the author's life. While the events of the author's life are recounted, there is no pretense of exact truth. Events may be exaggerated or altered for artistic or thematic purposes. Novels that portray settings and/or situations with which the author is familiar are not necessarily autobiographical. Neither are novels that include aspects drawn from the author's life as minor plot details. To be considere ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novel
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the histori ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Death In The Family
''A Death in the Family'' is an autobiographical novel by author James Agee, set in Knoxville, Tennessee. He began writing it in 1948, but it was not quite complete when he died in 1955 (with reputedly many portions having been written in the home of his friend Frances Wickes). It was edited and released posthumously in 1957 by editor David McDowell. Agee's widow and children were left with little money after Agee's death and McDowell wanted to help them by publishing the work. Agee won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1958 for the novel. The novel was included on ''Time'' 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923. Plot The novel is based on the events that occurred to Agee in 1915 when his father went out of town to see his own father, who had suffered a heart attack. During the return trip, Agee's father was killed in a car accident. The novel provides a portrait of life in Knoxville, Tennessee, showing how such a loss affects the young widow, her tw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Way Of All Flesh
''The Way of All Flesh'' (sometimes called ''Ernest Pontifex, or the Way of All Flesh'') is a semi-autobiographical novel by Samuel Butler that attacks Victorian-era hypocrisy. Written between 1873 and 1884, it traces four generations of the Pontifex family. Butler dared not publish it during his lifetime, but when it was published (in 1903) it was accepted as part of the general reaction against Victorianism. In its posthumous publication in 1903, Butler's first literary executor, R. A. Streatfeild, made substantial changes to Butler's manuscript. The original manuscript was first published in 1964 by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, edited by Daniel F. Howard. The title is a quotation from the ''Douay–Rheims Bible'''s translation of the Biblical Hebrew expression, to "go the way of all the earth", meaning "to die", in the '' Books of Kings'': "I am going the way of all flesh: take thou courage and shew thyself a man." (). In 1998, the Modern Library ranked ''The Way ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Junkie (novel)
''Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict'' (originally titled ''Junk'', later released as ''Junky'') is a novel by American beat generation writer William S. Burroughs, initially published under the pseudonym William Lee in 1953. His first published work, it is semi-autobiographical and focuses on Burroughs' life as a drug user and dealer. It has come to be considered a seminal text on the lifestyle of heroin addicts in the early 1950s. Inspiration The novel was considered unpublishable more than it was controversial. Burroughs began it largely at the request and insistence of Allen Ginsberg, who was impressed by Burroughs's letter-writing skill. Burroughs took up the task with little enthusiasm. However, partly because he saw that becoming a publishable writer was possible (his friend Jack Kerouac had published his first novel ''The Town and the City'' in 1950), he began to compile his experiences as an addict, ‘lush roller’ who stole from inebriated homeless pe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Post Office (novel)
''Post Office'' is the first novel written by the German-American author Charles Bukowski, published in 1971. The book is an autobiographical memoir of Bukowski's years working at the United States Postal Service. The film rights to the novel were sold in the early 1970s, but a film has not been made thus far. Plot In Los Angeles, California, down-and-out barfly Henry Chinaski becomes a substitute mail carrier; he quits for a while and lives on his winnings at the race track, then becomes a mail clerk. Chinaski drifts from place to place, surviving through booze and women, with his biting sense of humor and a cynical view of the world. Writing and publication An autobiographical account of Bukowski's years working as a carrier and sorter for the United States Postal Service,Kyle Ryan"Post Office by Charles Bukowski,"''The A.V. Club'', August 16, 2011. the novel is "dedicated to nobody". ''Post Office'' introduces Bukowski's autobiographical anti-hero, Henry Chinaski. It covers t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rubyfruit Jungle
''Rubyfruit Jungle'' is the first novel by Rita Mae Brown. Published in 1973, it was remarkable in its day for its explicit portrayal of lesbianism. The novel is a coming-of-age autobiographical account of Brown's youth and emergence as a lesbian author. The term "rubyfruit jungle" is a term used in the novel for the female genitals. Plot summary The novel focuses on Molly Bolt, the adopted daughter of a poor family, who possesses remarkable beauty and who is aware of her lesbianism from early childhood. Her relationship with her mother is rocky, and at a young age her mother, referred to as "Carrie", informs Molly that she is not her own biological child but a "bastard". Molly has her first same-sex sexual relationship in the sixth grade with her girlfriend Leota B. Bisland, and then again in a Florida high school, where she has another sexual relationship with another friend, the school's head cheerleader Carolyn Simpson, who willingly has sex with Molly but rejects the "lesbia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Villette (novel)
''Villette'' () is an 1853 novel written by English author Charlotte Brontë. After an unspecified family disaster, the protagonist Lucy Snowe travels from her native England to the fictional French-speaking city of Villette to teach at a girls' school, where she is drawn into adventure and romance. ''Villette'' was Charlotte Brontë's third and last novel published during her life. It was preceded in writing by '' The Professor'' (her posthumously published first novel, of which ''Villette'' is a reworking, though still not very similar), ''Jane Eyre'', and ''Shirley''. Author's background In 1842 Charlotte Brontë, at the age of 26, travelled to Brussels, Belgium, with her sister Emily. There they enrolled in a ''pensionnat'' (boarding school) run by M. and Mme. Constantin Héger. In return for board and tuition, Charlotte taught English and Emily taught music. The sisters' time at the ''pensionnat'' was cut short when their aunt, Elizabeth Branwell, died in October 1842. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with pronouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of pronoun ''thee'') when followed by a v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Adventures Of Augie March
''The Adventures of Augie March'' is a picaresque novel by Saul Bellow, published in 1953 by Viking Press. It features the eponymous Augie March, who grows up during the Great Depression, and it is an example of ''Bildungsroman'', tracing the development of an individual through a series of encounters, occupations and relationships from boyhood to manhood. ''The Adventures of Augie March'' won the 1954 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. BFbr>"National Book Awards – 1954" National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-30. (With essay by Nathaniel Rich from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.) Both ''Time'' magazine and the Modern Library Board named it one of the hundred best novels in the English language. Plot summary The story describes Augie March's growth from childhood to a fairly stable maturity. Augie, with his brother Simon and the mentally abnormal George have no father and are brought up by their mother, who is losing her eyesight, and a tyrannical, grandmother-li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Floating Opera
A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes''. It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version can be written in two forms: the double-storey a and single-storey ɑ. The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type. In English grammar, " a", and its variant " an", are indefinite articles. History The earliest certain ancestor of "A" is aleph (also written 'aleph), the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet, which consisted entirely of consonants (for that reason, it is also called an abjad to distinguish it fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Empire Of The Sun
''Empire of the Sun'' is a 1984 novel by English writer J. G. Ballard; it was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Like Ballard's earlier short story "The Dead Time" (published in the anthology '' Myths of the Near Future''), it is essentially fiction but draws extensively on Ballard's experiences in World War II. The name of the novel is derived from the etymology of the name for Japan. Ballard later wrote of his experiences in China as a boy and the making of the film of the same name in his autobiography '' Miracles of Life''. Plot The novel recounts the story of a young British boy, Jamie (“Jim”) Graham (named after Ballard's two first names, "James Graham"), who lives with his parents in Shanghai. After the Pearl Harbor attack, Japan occupies the Shanghai International Settlement, and in the following chaos Jim becomes separated from his parents. He spends some time in abandoned mansions, living on remnants of packaged ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Go Tell It On The Mountain (novel)
''Go Tell It on the Mountain'' is a 1953 semi-autobiographical novel by James Baldwin. It tells the story of John Grimes, an intelligent teenager in 1930s Harlem, and his relationship with his family and his church. The novel also reveals the back stories of John's mother, his biological father, and his violent, fanatically religious stepfather, Gabriel Grimes. The novel focuses on the role of the Pentecostal Church in the lives of African Americans, both as a negative source of repression and moral hypocrisy and a positive source of inspiration and community. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked ''Go Tell It on the Mountain'' 39th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. ''Time'' magazine included the novel on its list of the 100 best English-language novels released from 1923 to 2005. Background James Baldwin was born in 1924 in Harlem to an unwed mother who had left Maryland for New York and never knew his biological father. Several years la ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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