Event overview
On the essay as dialogical mode of reading and thinking and on the relationship between lived experience, storytelling, and critical theory in British cultural studies
Lellida Marinelli, 鈥淩eading, writing, being writerly selves through essayistic practice. Deborah Levy鈥檚 trilogy on writing and Jeanette Winterson鈥檚 Art Objects.鈥�
The paper will focus on 鈥榚ssayism鈥� as a dialogical, protean, literary mode of reading and thinking manifesting itself in diverse literary forms and expressions. The essay is undefinable by definition, but it is a 鈥渓iterary region鈥� with paths that cross other well-known genres such as autobiography, memoir, and literary criticism.
Deborah Levy鈥檚 鈥榣iving autobiography鈥� (Things I Don鈥檛 Want to Know (2013), The Cost of Living (2018) and Real Estate (2021)) is an example of the self-discovery and affirmation of a 鈥渨riterly self鈥� and of how such discovery, by means of an essayistic mode of thinking, enriches an autobiographical narration that plays with structure and perspective. Jeanette Winterson鈥檚 Art Objects (1995) is a collection of metaliterary essays on literature, writing, and the experience of art. While they are two different forms of metaliterary essayism, both deal with key questions of what it means to be a writer.
Levy鈥檚 and Winterson鈥檚 ideas on writing are embedded in acts of reading and reading-through other voices (most prominently, Virginia Woolf), including researching 鈥榓 writerly voice鈥�; construing 鈥榝emale characters鈥�; and the relevance of spaces for writing in Levy or the idea of writing as transformation, which can happen through a very close listening of the 鈥渟ubtle sound of prose鈥� in Winterson.
Elisa Russian, 鈥淟andscapes with Social Figures: On the Autobiographical Mode of British Cultural Studies鈥�
In this paper, I examine the relationship between lived experience, storytelling, and critical theory in British cultural studies鈥攁 field that features, in Raymond Williams鈥檚 words, several 鈥渉ybrid[s] of autobiography and argument.鈥� I analyze the narrative and rhetorical function of social figures, particularly the working-class mother, within three essays that belong to this tradition: The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working-Class Life (1957), by Richard Hoggart; Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives (1986), by Carolyn Steedman; and Respectable: The Experience of Class (2016), by Lynsey Hanley.
Hoggart, Steedman and Hanley recount the forms of social mobility they experienced as intellectuals from working-class backgrounds. By foregrounding the figure of the mother, these authors both reflect on the distance that separates them from their family鈥檚 milieu and reassert the validity of the values inherent in their upbringing.
Through a discussion of the literary and theoretical genres on which these writers rely and of the genealogical ties that bind them, I suggest that saying 鈥淚鈥� in historically- and sociologically-oriented texts is often instrumental in countering existing theoretical frameworks.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 6 Feb 2025 | 5:30pm - 7:15pm |
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