Alfred Nobel University Journal of Philology (Dec 2020)

ELEMENTS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN Ch. BRONTË`S NOVEL “JANE EYRE”

  • Svitlana K. Revutska,
  • Maryna V. Forgel

DOI
https://doi.org/10.32342/2523-4463-2020-2-20-11
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2, no. 20
pp. 113 – 120

Abstract

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Stable interest of readers in the autobiographies of famous people encourages authors to find different ways of presence / absence of the author-narrator in the text, to balance the relationship between biographical truth and fiction in contradictory living conditions, etc., which gives rise to metagenres in literature. The study of the origins of autobiographical writing and the clarification of the actual genre specificity of works of an autobiographical nature, obviously, should be sought in the array of classical literature. Works that are debatable in defining the genre need special attention. Domestic and foreign researchers have repeatedly drawn attention to the distinction between the specifics of genres containing autobiographical data: a novel / the story is an autobiography, memoirs, a confessional novel, an autofiction, essays, diaries, etc., but the autobiography of Charlotte Brontë`s novel “Jane Eyre”, originally called “Jane Eyre. Autobiography”, needs clarification. Therefore, the aim of the article is to clarify the genre specifics and elements of biographical writing in Charlotte Brontë`s novel “Jane Eyre”. Defining the genre of Charlotte Brontë`s novel “Jane Eyre” is problematic, as it is difficult to call it autobiographical, given that the author herself defined the genre of the work in the original title and, accordingly, was guided not so much by literary criteria as by her own understanding. All this determined the formulation of the purpose of the article to find out the genre specifics and elements of biographical writing in Charlotte Brontë`s novel “Jane Eyre”. The paper widely presents the positions of various scholars on the genre features of autobiographical writing, analyzed their coincidences in the novel “Jane Eyre”. Attention is emphasized to the fact that we have a number of indisputable facts-memories about the author’s childhood in a piece of writing, but they are most likely a method of rethinking and self-knowledge of the writer, although there are moments of authorial openness in the main character. It turns out that it is impossible to determine definitively that the novel “Jane Eyre” is an autobiography. However, this term is important for establishing theories about the biographical content of Ch. Brontë in her novel. Newer genres, such as autofiction, have helped to define the process by which real aspects are represented by fictional facts. Given the various theories of research on the genre features of autobiography in a piece of writing, including the relationship between author, character and narrator, the pact between reader and author allows us to consider certain passages of “Jane Eyre” as a first-person narrative by Ch. Brontë

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