Abstract:

Abstract Among the various perspectives from which autobiography and autofiction have been studied, there is no theoretical approach that shows the difficulties created by one of the main elements of these genres: the author. Recent studies about the author underline the importance of going back to this concept to reevaluate the connections between writers and their work, along with the role it plays in their relationships with the context. Because they create autofigurations, autobiographical genres problematize the creator’s status and, for instance, he/she becomes the center of the conflict between reality and fiction (origin of numerous discussions). For this reason, in this paper I propose an analysis that considers the author as the main focus of the referentiality related to both genres but also –due to its own unstable and fragmented nature– as the source of the paradoxes that taint autobiography and define autofiction.

Keywords: