Creating the story and yourself. The self-aware narrator and his narrative identity in "The House at Flon" by Kjell Johansson Cover Image

Att skapa berättelsen och sig själv. Den självmedvetne berättaren och hans narrativa identitet i "Huset vid Flon" av Kjell Johansson
Creating the story and yourself. The self-aware narrator and his narrative identity in "The House at Flon" by Kjell Johansson

Author(s): MAGDALENA ŻMUDA-TRZEBIATOWSKA
Subject(s): Other Language Literature
Published by: Uniwersytet Adama Mickiewicza

Summary/Abstract: The article’s aim is to discuss the Swedish autobiographical novel Huset vid Flon by Kjell Johansson as an example of the self-conscious narration (in Wayne C. Booth’s understanding). The grown-up narrator, who admits to being a professional writer, presents a retrospective of his childhood on Stockholm suburbs in the 1940s and 50s. He constructs his narration before the reader’s eyes, involves him/her in a dialogue, explains the employed narrative devices and plays the role of a guide through a no longer existing world. He is also an insightful and at times ironic commentator of the reality. For him organising the memories is above all a quest for his own identity. This “telling stories of oneself”, which can be viewed in a light of Paul Ricoeur’s narrative identity, is also strongly embedded in a collective experience of growing up in the Swedish welfare state.

  • Issue Year: 2019
  • Issue No: 26
  • Page Range: 49-60
  • Page Count: 12
  • Language: Swedish
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