Imagining Gender in Biographical Fiction: Introduction

AbstractThe introduction situates the question of gender in biographical fiction in relation to current scholarship on biofiction, life writing, and historical fiction, and establishes a dialogue between biofiction studies and gender-sensitive approaches to both life writing and historical fiction. Clarifying the often complex and contradictory understandings of key terms that have emerged in recent scholarship on biofiction, historical fiction, life writing, and their inter-relationships, the introduction discusses the ethics of biofiction and the notion of biographical authenticity; the persistence of conventional tropes of femininity, masculinity, and gender normativity in biofiction; the aesthetics of agency in post-Lukácsian biofiction and historical fiction; and the role of creativity in imagining feminist, queer, and non-binary pasts.The introduction then outlines the volume’s individual chapters and the common themes or approaches that connect them, including gender and power relations in the re-imagined lives; critique or reinscription of patriarchal values and mindsets; cliché and generic convention; revision and reinvention; ventriloquism and visibility; uses of historical research, evidence, sources, and their traces in the biofictional text; narratological aspects; and questions of readership and reception.