Graphische Literatur und Autobiographie

Synmediales Life Writing zwischen Faktualität und Fiktionalisierung

Abstract

Since the last decades of the 20th century, there have been numerous examples of autofictional literature in the field of text-image media, namely Graphic Novels, comics and BDs. In literary studies, these are referred to as autobiocomics, autobioBDs, BDs auto-biographiques etc., whereby all these genre designations reveal their terminological proximity to traditional literary autobiography. And so these literary media combinations usually also trace the individual life and career of a person who shares the same name as the respective author. At the same time, however, the terminological diversity also seems to point to the complexity of current autobiographical and autofictional graphic literature.
This article is dedicated to a specific example of autofictional writing: Flix's comic held (2002). It will examine how individual life experiences are staged in the media and how the respective self-representation is designed. It will also discuss whether Lejeune’s theory of the pacte autobiographique and Doubrovsky’s concept of autofiction can be applied to this new conception of autobiographical writing.