On the Correlation of the Concepts of “Autobiography Genre”, “Autobiographical Discourse”, “Autobiographism”: Literary Aspect

Abstract

The article deals with the key concepts used in the analysis of autobiographical literature. The Russian and foreign science is acknowledged to lack the terminological precision in their application which leads to the notions and literary genres being diffused. The author analyzes the definition of the autobiography genre introduced by a French literary scholar Ph. Lejeune, as well as the polemic debate on his concept in the Western criticism of the 1950s–1970s, which revealed the fact that the real range of autobiographical works is significantly more diverse. The research shows the main trends in naming this kind of texts. The author singles out the term ‘autobiographical discourse’ as the most relevant for philologists and linguists and demonstrates the limits of its application in the sphere of literary studies. The notion of ‘autobiographism’ is looked upon as having transparent semantic meanings, but at the same time as underdeveloped by the theorists. The article gives its definition and states the effectiveness of using this concept as applied to fictional and nonfictional-fictional autobiographic texts. It is concluded that the differentiation of the autobiography genre, autobiographical discourse and autobiographism in the process of the literary analysis is necessary for a more precise definition of the genre of a literary work and identification of its artistic distinctiveness.

Keywords

• autobiography
• autobiographical discourse
• autobiographism
• genre
• terms