Shuttling Between Fiction And Truth

This thesis is intended to probe into the characteristics of Doris Lessing's first autobiography—Under My Skin in the light of the theory concerning"Historiographic Metafiction"advanced by the Canadian literary theorist Linda Hutcheon, which may hopefully breathe some fresh air into the study of biographic literature in that it could provide a special means for readers to put history and text together in the social context.Doris Lessing, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in literature, is a studious British writer. Readers all over the world are attracted by her multiple themes, special viewpoints and bold experiments in her works. Lessing, as a British writer with thirty years living experiences in South Africa, becomes an unusual writer with double identities and double contexts. By reading her works we found that her novels are strongly affected by her personal experience, while her autobiographies imply the writing processes of her novels naturally. Meanwhile, the two volumes of her autobiographies unfold a picture scroll of postmodern aesthetics. Accordingly, in Under My Skin, Lessing develops two independent but correlated clues: her life course and her creation process.This thesis consists of five parts:Chapter One,"Introduction", concentrates on the life and works of Lessing and the degree of attention and approval her work has received. As just one famous female writer within the literary world, through her abundant writing we find Lessing are shaped by her own experiences in Africa. Her first autobiography is just the reflection of her unique experience. As far as this autobiography is concerned, the postmodern aesthetic features are quite striking. Starting from above issues, the author of this paper puts forward research aims of this thesis, and defines the feasibility and value of this research by analyzing the current situation of and problems in the study of biography and Lessing. Chapter Two,"Theoretical Framework", tries to set up a theoretical framework for this paper from two aspects, and finally explores into the theory of historiographic metafiction. First of all, in this chapter, the development of modern biographic literature and that of metafiction are looked into. Modern biographic literature changes its core contents under traditional appearances. Autobiographies have imported the literary techniques once reserved for the novel over the porous boundary between life narrative and fiction. Metafiction, which plays language games,makes language labyrinths and sets readers out of context, ends up as a form of postmodern novel not favored by readers. Postmodern novel is in search of a new form. Thus, biographic metafiction—a new form of novel that combines biography and metafiction—comes into being, which just embodies the features of historiographic metafiction that Linda Hutcheon has conceived and shed light on. Then, it is pointed out in the paper that historiographic metafiction appears as a new form connecting history and social context, its content fusing deep thoughts, rich historical and cultural knowledge and life-like stories together. Finally, it is also noted that, through the above illation, this thesis will deal with Under My Skin from the perspective of historiographic metafiction theory.Chapter Three,"Under My Skin as a Metafictional and Historiographical Text", probes into the double features of historiographic metafiction of the text—its metafictional and hitoriographical characteristics, which presents itself in an autobiographical context burdened with story-tellings and makings, shuttling between fiction and truth. The feature of the self-conscious writing of metafiction is discussed in two sections: the first section is concerned namely with its exposure of narrative artifice, which means the author deliberately exposes his writing skills and creating process; while the second section explores the problems in fictionality and reality. It is also argued in the part that the features of historiographic metafiction are actualized by the retracing of history, and to some extent it means a re-digging of history. Seen from the above mentioned two aspects, this thesis concludes that Under My Skin is a text of historiographic metafiction with the characteristics of postmodern features.Chapter Four,"The Narrative Characteristics of Under My Skin", explores the narrative strategies in Under My Skin from the perspective of narratology. Lessing makes use of an autobiographical framework to record her experiences, and meanwhile constructs her unique context with postmodern skills. Unique and novel writing skills, the shift of narrative, intertextuality and intratextuality, etc. are adopted in the context, which also reflects the author's process of conceiving and her product resulting from textualization.Chapter Five,"Conclusion", upon reviewing this paper, summarizes the contents, and points out that although Lessing has been generally categorized as a realist writer, having made breakthroughs and innovations, she writes marvelous postmodern works. Moreover, as a new direction in the development of postmodern novels, historiographic metafiction provides a new access to novels, the author of this paper considers it to be a new way of literary writing, thus helpful to the reading of the texts concerned.