The importance of separating the author from the narrative in modern and classical literature

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to analyse the autobiographical works by contemporary Kazakh, Russian and American writers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries belonging to the post-colonial and post-totalitarian discourses in terms of the specificity of the author’s representation. Based on a literature analysis, it has been concluded that the development of post-colonial and post-totalitarian discourse is reflected in updating the genre of an autobiographical novel that gives the author some freedom to choose factual material and fictional elements as part of the artistic embodiment of the author’s vision of the world. The main ideas of such works are maintaining national/racial and cultural identity and preserving historical and cultural continuity within the framework of the national image of the world. An autobiographical novel is characterized, on the one hand, by relying on the real facts of the author’s biography, and on the other, by mythologization and idealization of the past, and a focus on fiction. This key feature of an autobiographical novel prevents possible distortions in the reception and interpretation of such works, mixing the author’s image of the world and a specific historical and cultural situation, which is expressed by the autobiographical novel.

Keywords

• autobiographical novel
• image of the world
• narrative practices
• author’s identity
• post-colonial and post-totalitarian discourses