An Autobiographical Reading of Drago Jančar’s Novel “Mocking Desire”

Abstract

The novel Mocking Desire was published in 1993, when Drago Jančar was already a wellknown author, who had received some important literary awards. This hybrid and multifaceted literary work describes the Slovenian writer’s stay in New Orleans and in New York. Because Jančar visited the United States on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1985, his novel is read as an autobiography, although the author has not established an autobiographical pact with the reader (Lejeune). The aim of this study is to consider the autobiographical writing as a literary genre, the figure of reading, and the play with convention, in order to answer the question what provokes the autobiographical reading of Mocking Desire.

Keywords

• autobiographical novel
• autobiographical pact
• plays with convention
• fiction writing
• narrative
• Drago Jančar