Traumatic identity and aura in David Lodge's Author, author

Yebra Pertusa, Jose Maria

Resumen: This paper delves into David Lodge’s Author, Author (2004) as an example of neo-Victorian celebrity biofiction, more concretely on Henry James. The genre belongs to the wave of Victorian revival in current literature which also affects cultural studies in general. My main contention is that Lodge’s novel responds to current cultural anxieties, particularly the crisis of identity and authorship and the end of Walter Benjamin’s concept of aura, by sublimating them into late- nineteenth-century traumata. The choice of James is, the article argues, not casual. He represents the redeeming figure of a lost auratic world; the human in crisis, traumatized because he does not fit in the new status quo.

Idioma: Inglés

Año: 2015

Publicado en: ES. Revista de Filología Inglesa 36 (2015), 167-184
ISSN: 2531-1646

Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/DGA/H05
Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MINECO/FFI2012-32719

Tipo y forma: Article (Published version)