Autobiographic Narrative of Modern Women Prose: Theoretical Aspect

Abstract

The autobiographical beginning is one of the typological features of women's literature. For
Russian women's prose of the 19th century autobiography was relevant as a non-fiction strategy. In the
20th century, “autobiographizm” was actively developed, which, thanks to its mythologization,
becomes a fiction strategy, then in the 21st century the leading narrative strategy became an
autobiographical narrative, potentially allowing to realize the entire range of fiction / non-fiction. Since
the autobiographical narrative in women's literature can be realized directly and indirectly, the authors
of the article suggest using two terms to distinguish between two different types of its representation in
the text. We propose to update the term autobiographical narrative (in the narrow sense) when we find
that the facts of the biography of a particular author are reflected to a greater or lesser extent in the
narrator. The term autogynographic narrative we are introducing allows us to shift the view of the
researcher from the autobiographical narrator to the act of narration itself and the narrative strategies
that construct female subjectivity in the work. Autobiographical narrative in modern women's prose
represents individual subjectivity, then autogynographic narrative is one of the ways of constructing
female subjectivity. In the course of the study, it was found that the main method of narrativizing the
Other and representing female subjectivity is quite naturally two similar but identical strategies – the
strategy of “double voice” and the strategy of polyphonism.