The Question of ‘Voice’ in Contemporary Literature

This book re-examines conceptions of voice in contemporary literature. While a great deal has already been written about the construction of 'voice' in literature, from both a creative and critical/narratological perspective, the rise of autofiction in English has brought the question of 'who speaks' and in what capacity (e.g. as character-narrator, as author or authorial alter ego) into the frame, as some writers challenge the conventions and limits of fiction, employing documentary as well as narrative modes to treat aspects of their lived experience. In so doing, such writers may refuse or redraw the fictional and/or autobiographical pacts in such a way that the ‘difference’ between author and character-narrator is reduced, if not obliterated. This book considers a broad range of topics: the autofictional; voices in translation; multilingual voices; intertextual voices; female voices/écriture féminine; the collective voice/voices of or from history; distributed voices and choral voices. It examines a range of contemporary works, many of which problematize and complicate questions of voice through their use of hybrid or innovative forms as well as in the ways in which they navigate the fact-fiction borderlands.