Overview

The title of this book, Derivative Lives, alludes to the challenge of finding one’s way within the contemporary market of virtually limitless information and claims to veracity. Amid this profusion of options, it is easy to feel lost in spaces of uncertainty where biographical truth teeters between the real and the imaginative. The title thus also points to the prolific market of biographical novels that openly and intentionally play in the speculative space between the real and the fictional. Drawing on theories of risk and uncertainty, Derivative Lives considers the surge in biofiction in Spain and globally, relating literary expression to concepts such as circumstantiality, derivatives, speculation, and game studies.

Full Product Details

Author:   Virginia Newhall Rademacher (Associate Professor of Literature and Cultural Studies, Babson College, USA)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Academic USA
ISBN:  

9781501386909

ISBN 10:   1501386905
Pages:   248
Publication Date:   11 August 2022
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction SECTION I The Circumstantial Case: Chasing Criminals/Tracing Traumatic Histories 1. Making the Circumstantial Case: Reasonable Doubt and Moral Certainty in Javier Cercas' Soldiers of Salamis 2. Fugitive Biofictions: Antonio Munoz Molina's Like a Fading Shadow and Gabriela Ybarra's The Dinner Guest SECTION II Speculative Truths and Derivative Fictions 3. Entertaining the What-Ifs in Rosa Montero's The Madwoman of the House and the Ridiculous Idea of Never Seeing You Again 4. Fraudulent Pasts and Fictional Futures in Javier Cercas' The Impostor and Adolfo Garcia Ortega's The Birthday Buyer SECTION III Critical Play in Biofictional Games 5. Playing for Real: Simulated Games of Identity in Lucia Etxebarria's Courtney and I and Truth is Nothing but a Moment of Falsehood Appendices to Chapter 5 6. Literary Afterlives and Paratextual Play: Elvira Navarro's The Last Days of Adelaida Garcia Morales and Antonio Orejudos's The Famous Five and Me Coda: Biofiction's Antidotes to Post-Truth Endnotes Bibliography Index

Reviews

A brilliant analysis of the Spanish biofictional novel within the wider context of contemporary thought. Virginia Rademacher examines research from both within and beyond the field of literary criticism to show how biofiction as a genre challenges the notion of history as an abstraction or an irretrievable reality by depicting how real people deal with specific historical situations. Rademacher's command of modern history, intellectual currents, and the Spanish bio-novel is indeed impressive. * Barbara Mujica, author of Frida, Sister Teresa, I Am Venus and Miss del Rio *

Author Information

Virginia Newhall Rademacher is Professor of Hispanic Literature and Cultural Studies at Babson College, USA. She has published widely on genre, identity, and new narrative formats, including the contemporary surge in biofiction. Among others, her publications have appeared in a/b:Auto/Biography Studies, American Book Review, Persona Studies, Economistas, Hispanic Issues, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, Ciberletras, and Monographic Review.

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