Abstract
Over the last number of decades, the biographical canon has become the focus of scholarly attention for several reasons: revision of the essential concepts of (self)-identity, keen interest in liminal literary forms, searches for new forms of assessment of the artist’s creative output and new interpretive methodologies. Biofiction as a genre encompassing both documentary and fictional elements represents not only the biographical subject proper but also the author’s subjective orientation. The case study of a recent biofiction about Henry James (“The Master” by the Irish gay writer Colm Tóibín) suggests that silence as a semiotic practice and cognitive failure plays an important role in this particular example of the numerous biographies of James and functions not to uncover the sites of suppression of a presumably gay protagonist but acquires a universal, ontological meaning, signifying the fatal solitude of the artist, which is very close to the main credo of James’ own writing.
Highlights
IntroductionOver the last few decades the biographical canon (both in the epistemological and generic meanings of the concept) has been at the center of interest of the academe and public at large; it has been essentially revised for several reasons
Over the last few decades the biographical canon has been at the center of interest of the academe and public at large; it has been essentially revised for several reasons
In a very broad sense, the boom of memoirs and biographical literature is connected with the sociocultural situation of postmodernism and the cultural period that is replacing it, which might be called post-postmodernism
Summary
Over the last few decades the biographical canon (both in the epistemological and generic meanings of the concept) has been at the center of interest of the academe and public at large; it has been essentially revised for several reasons. It seems evident that biographical narratives again seem to be part and parcel of the new cultural logic which, according to Alison Gibbons, brings such transformations as “a rehabilitated ethical consciousness”, “popularity of historical fiction” and “ revival of realism”, which means that “when real elements appear in fiction ”, it is to “signal realism, rather than to foreground the artifice of the text” (Gibbons 2017), breaking with endless language games, moral relativity and all-embracing irony There is another reason for the blossoming of biofictions which is embedded in the present situation in Literary Studies as an academic discipline. Before analyzing Tóibín’s biofiction, it seems necessary to provide an insight into the theoretical issue of silence
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
