The Dissolution Of Self: Narrative Perspectives Of Elizabeth Bowen, Christa Wolf And Elena Ferrante
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The personal pronoun “I” has slipped into our ways of thinking and literature like an iron bolt. However, the authors Elizabeth Bowen, Christa Wolf and Elena Ferrante--though a generation apart and living in different nations--work to unloosen it in their writing. Their characters are not single, unitary beings with a stable “I”-- but kaleidoscopic in their variety of states of mind and being. They present a multiplicity of “selves” merging with past aspects of self, narrators, characters and themselves as authors.This essay foregrounds their narrative experiments with the “dissolution of self” and examines the lexical and narrative techniques through which they “dissolve” and express their multiplicity as women, authors, narrators, citizens, friends, and, sometimes, spies in selected works
Author: Patricia Laurence
Institution: City University of New York
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4414524291
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