Essay Writing Through Retrospective Thinking: Multiphotography as a Metaphor of the Liaison between Essay, Memory and Fiction in Paul Auster’s “Portrait of an Invisible Man”

The purpose of this article is to establish a certain type of relationship between essay, memory and fiction. We will demonstrate that this particular combination doesn´t happen exclusively because prose is fictionalized since the writer’s memory is suspicious and unreliable (common place of critici...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Aguirre, Eduardo
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2019
País:Costa Rica
Institución:Universidad de Costa Rica
Repositorio:Portal de Revistas UCR
Idioma:español
OAI Identifier:oai:portal.ucr.ac.cr:article/39985
Acceso en línea:https://revistas.ucr.ac.cr/index.php/humanidades/article/view/39985
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:essays
fiction
literary forms and genres
contemporary literature
ensayo literario
literatura de ficción
forma y género literario
literatura contemporánea
Descripción
Sumario:The purpose of this article is to establish a certain type of relationship between essay, memory and fiction. We will demonstrate that this particular combination doesn´t happen exclusively because prose is fictionalized since the writer’s memory is suspicious and unreliable (common place of criticism), that is to say that whoever engages in essayistic writing from memory tends to mystify its object of study, multiplying it as who puts two mirrors face to face, presenting the image multiplied under the appearance of personal experience. In order to do this, first we will inspect the proximity between essay and memoir’s; afterwards, we will exhibit the way in which essay writing is activated through diffuse and reconstructed memory. In the end, as evidence to our premise, we will attest how this is done in “Portrait of an Invisible Man” by American writer Paul Auster.