Exploring Identity in Literature and Life Stories
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Exploring Identity in Literature and Life Stories Exploring Identity in Literature and Life Stories: The Elusive Self Edited by Guri E. Barstad, Karen S. P. Knutsen and Elin Nesje Vestli Exploring Identity in Literature and Life Stories: The Elusive Self Edited by Guri E. Barstad, Karen S. P. Knutsen and Elin Nesje Vestli This book first published 2019 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2019 by Guri E. Barstad, Karen S. P. Knutsen, Elin Nesje Vestli and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-3571-1 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-3571-8 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements .................................................................................. viii Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 The Search for Self: Continuity and Mutability Guri Ellen Barstad, Karen Patrick Knutsen and Elin Nesje Vestli Identity and Cultural Hybridity Chapter One ............................................................................................... 16 “Brittle identities”: Identity Discourses in the Work of Austrian Author Julya Rabinowich Elin Nesje Vestli Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 31 Identity, Trauma and Language Confusion in Olga Grjasnowa’s Der Russe ist einer der Birken liebt and Gott ist nicht schüchtern Grazziella Predoiu Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 48 Fractured Boundaries, Cultural Hybridity and In-between Spaces in Norwegian Young Adult Immigrant Literature: Maria Navarro Skaranger’s Alle utlendinger har lukka gardiner Wayne Kelly Identity and Religion Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 64 The Search for Authenticity: Religious Identity in the Norwegian Novel Guds tjener by Tor Edvin Dahl Guri Ellen Barstad Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 81 “My centre not my edge”: Uncanny Identity, Death, Doubles and Medievalism in Kevin Hart’s Your Shadow Melanie Duckworth vi Table of Contents Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 103 The Israelite and Saint Identity According to Polynesian Latter-day Saints Mette Ramstad Identity, Nationality and Language Chapter Seven .......................................................................................... 120 The Weight of Collective Memory: Surviving in the Inhospitable Realm of Haiti André Avias Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 137 Identity, Migration and Language in Two Stories by the German-Speaking Writer Richard Wagner from Romania Roxana Nubert and Ana-Maria Dascălu-Romițan Chapter Nine ............................................................................................ 153 Group Identity in Teenage Talk from Madrid Annette M. Myre Jørgensen Identity, Profession and Gender Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 178 “It’s doable”: Women’s Journeys to Academia in South Africa and Their Sense of Self Eva Lambertsson Björk, Jutta Eschenbach, Mathabo Khau and Lynette Webb Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 195 Fiction as the “first laboratory of moral judgment”: Pre-service Teachers and the Development of a Professional Identity Karen Patrick Knutsen Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 215 Negotiating and Introducing Identities: The “Écriture Collective” of Ariane Mnouchkine, Hélène Cixous and the Théâtre du Soleil Gabriele C. Pfeiffer Exploring Identity in Literature and Life Stories vii Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 228 Alienated and Evanescent Identities in the Contemporary World of Austrian Author Kathrin Röggla Alessandra Schininà Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 241 How “the Other” Becomes “Agent” through the Rupture of War: A New Look at Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs Novels Jane M. Ekstam Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 255 In Search of “the message hidden in the beauty of the words”: Virginia Woolf’s Novel Mrs Dalloway Britt Andersen Identity and Illness Chapter Sixteen ....................................................................................... 276 Writing with One’s Eyes: Identity and Communicative Strategies in Masahiro Fujita’s 99% Thank you and Leo Montero’s Muñeca de trapo Wladimir Chávez Vaca Identity and Childhood Chapter Seventeen ................................................................................... 294 “Each homeless person has a different story to tell”: Homeless Identity in David Walliams’ Metafictive Children’s Book Mr Stink (2009) Gro-Anita Myklevold Chapter Eighteen ..................................................................................... 309 “The right Alice”: A Cybertext Perspective on Narrated Identity in Film Adaptations of Lewis Carroll’s Novels Britt W. Svenhard Contributors ............................................................................................. 324 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The editors would like to thank Østfold University College, Halden, Norway and the Faculty of Business, Languages and Social Sciences for funding received to arrange a conference in Vienna, Austria in December 2017, and for a series of follow-up sessions held at the college in Halden, under the auspices of the Literature and Narrativity Research Group. We truly appreciate the work that the referees have put into reading the draft manuscript, giving us insightful and constructive feedback on the texts included here. We are also particularly grateful for the patience and generous support of our commissioning editors Rebecca Gladders, Adam Rummens and their team at Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Guri Ellen Barstad, Karen Patrick Knutsen and Elin Nesje Vestli Østfold University College Halden Norway INTRODUCTION THE SEARCH FOR SELF: CONTINUITY AND MUTABILITY GURI ELLEN BARSTAD, KAREN PATRICK KNUTSEN AND ELIN NESJE VESTLI Dimensions of Identity in Narratives Exploring Identity in Literature and Life Stories: The Elusive Self grew out of a project focusing on how issues of identity are presented in different types of narratives, based at Østfold University College, Halden, Norway. It was initiated towards the end of 2015 by the Literature and Narrativity Research Group in the Foreign Language Department. The group held a conference in Vienna, Austria in December 2017, and continued with a series of symposia in the following year, where more members of the research group and scholars from other institutions were invited to participate. In addition to the Østfold University College researchers, contributors were recruited from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, the West University and the Polytechnic University of Timisoara, Romania, the Nelson Mandela University of South Africa, the University of Vienna, Austria and the University of Ragusa, Italy. This volume comprises 18 chapters, selected and adapted from the three-year long project. According to the psychologist and narratologist Michael Bamberg, identity “designates the attempt to differentiate and integrate a sense of self along different social and personal dimensions such as gender, age, race, occupation, gangs, socio-economic status, ethnicity, class, nation states, or regional territory” (2013). This definition reveals the complexity of the term. Many narratives have focused on issues of identity, from the 2 Introduction classical Bildungsroman describing the development and education of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood, to postmodern studies of the fragmented self in literature and life stories. The initial context of the Bildungsroman was Germany in the late 18th century, and these novels recorded the development of a (usually male) protagonist, maturing through a process of acculturation. Ultimately, the protagonist was integrated harmoniously into the surrounding society (Karafilis 1998, 63). As Maria Karafilis argues, today, “the goals of such a text are naïve and, in fact, impossible to achieve in postmodern societies that deny the existence of a unified self” (ibid.). Instead, contemporary narratives seem to affirm “an era of alienation from the society whose values in former times might have confirmed selfhood” (Breandlin 1984, 75, cited in Karafilis ibid.). The Bildungsroman and other narrative genres have had to develop to accommodate new forms of being and socio- economic conditions in our globalized, yet fragmented world. Our work in this project focuses mainly on contemporary literature or life stories, actualizing this postmodern conundrum. The overarching