Call for papers: Postmodernist Biofiction collection

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April 26, 2017 by Kelly Gardiner

Postmodernist Biofiction: Edited Collection with Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Biographical fiction, or biofiction, is an increasingly popular sub-genre of the contemporary novel, with writers’ lives attracting particular attention. David Lodge defines biofiction as ‘a novel which takes a real person and their real history as the subject matter for imaginative exploration, using the novel’s techniques for representing subjectivity rather than the objective, evidence-based discourse of biography’. Biofiction is also distinguishable by its use of the subject’s real name. This real-world proper noun situates biofiction on the ontological frontier between biography and fiction, and distinguishes the genre from the more numerous, but less explicit, engagements of roman-à-clef.

 

Proposals are sought for an edited collection of articles about this exciting sub-genre. The editor is especially (but not exclusively) interested in discussing the postmodernity of biofiction, both in terms of its modernist subjects and postmodern narrative strategies. The collection arises from a conference held at the University of Reading on 25^th March 2017, but contributions from the wider biofiction community are warmly welcomed.

Topics may include, but are by no means limited to:

• The origins of biofiction: what cultural conditions enabled the evolution of the genre?
• The ethics of biofiction: how much invention is legitimate?
• The peculiarities of writing the lives of writers: how far does the work inform the life? Why have certain writers attracted so much attention?
• Biofiction’s envisaged audience: how far does it depend on readers’ prior knowledge of the subject?
• The discursive nature of biofiction: how far does biofiction engage with the historical subject, how far with a textual construct?
• The (im)possibility of life writing: biofiction’s relationship with biography, autobiography, memoir, and creative non-fiction
• Biofiction as a form of adaptation, appropriation, and/or literary criticism
• Biofiction’s relationship with the literary biopic.

 

Please send 500-word proposals for 4,000 word articles to postmodernistbiofiction@gmail.com by 1st May 2017.