MA-ENG, Sem-3, Autobiography, Unit 2, Laura Marcus, ‘The Law of Genre’ in Autobiographical Discourses, 05.06.2021

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2 Laura Marcus’s Autobiography: ‘The Law of Genre’ Prof. (Dr.) Mosam Sinha www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

About Laura Marcus 3 •Laura Marcus by profession is a Professor of English at the Sussex University. •She has the credit of publishing both 19th and 20th century Literature. •Besides, she is the co-editor of The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century English Literature. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

The Works of Laura Marcus 4 Some of her book publications list include: • Autobiographical Discourses on Theory, Criticism, and Practice in 1994 • Virginia Woolf, a literary criticism on Writers and their Work (1997/2004), • Co-editor of The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century English Literature (2004). • The Tenth Muse: Writing about Cinema in the Modernist Period in 2007 • Dreams of Modernity: Psychoanalysis, Literature, Cinema in 2014 www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

A Major Achievement 5 •Laura Marcus was awarded the James Russell Lowell Prize for 2008 by The Modern Language Association. •Laura Marcus has given emphasis on reviewing Modernism for the year 1895. •Because 1895 is considered as the base point for the cinematic history, a terrible railway accident in Paris, and the psychoanalysis by Freud's discovery about the unconscious (where The Interpretation of Dreams was published in 1899). •There are four core themes that matter the most like - railways, cinema, detective stories and psychoanalysis which- are deftly unified in the Dreams of Modernity, where it unfolds a strong correlation among evidently unrelated concepts. •Incidentally, early deliberation on cinema highlighted on the parallels between imaginations and films. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

A Major Achievement 6 •It has been observed that in majority of cases, scenery moved past. • Freud disclosed that he saw his mother stripped on a train when he was two years old, to which he took into contemplation of the established moment of his theory on the Oedipus Complex. (a theory that suggests that every single person has deeply repressed instincts for their parents since childhood, is no less so.) •Discovery, exposure, and unmasking are quintessential notions that contributed to the development of detective fiction, while the motif of divulgation was crucial for another literary invention which is known as the so-called 'new biography', that emanated in the initial part of twentieth century. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

A Major Achievement 7 •Dreams of Modernity contains twelve chapters. •Chapter One is about investigating the murders of women based in London in 1888. •The crimes done by Jack the Ripper, were majorly archived in Britain and also throughout the world. •Interpretation of the enactment and murder representations is vital to the nineteenth century, which are illustrated convincingly in the contemporary texts. • Chapter Two provides a different interpretation theory where the focus is on psychoanalytic thought. •Therefore, it reflects the relevance of railways in psychoanalysis where nineteenth-century accounts of 'railway shock' are explored being a disease of contemporary life making impact on the fundamental concepts by Freud. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

A Major Achievement 8 •Chapter Three gives importance to a unique article by Walter Benjamin entitled as 'Kriminalromane, auf Reisen' (Journey related Detective Novels), that was issued in 1930. • It also highlighted the implied linkage between the evolving detective fiction of the era and trains. •The focal point in Chapter Four is on contemporary psychology that includes the notions of attention and interruption. • The term consciousness models that imply revolved around the Modernist literature and conception where they shaped attraction theories, advertising, modernity language and film. •Chapter Five contains the gravity of cinema during1920s-1930s: city films in context to novels written in Europe and America are taken into consideration in this part of the book. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

A Major Achievement 9 •Whereas the Chapter Six explores the connection between fantasy and stories as told by the patients of Freud and in publications by many female writers, where the attention is on the idea of private theatre being a sphere of reveries, fantasy, and systematic daydreaming having linkage to the production of fiction. •On the flip side, Chapter Seven evaluates the liaison of an author and with his/her narrative, where readers are introduced about modern literary form known as 'new biography'. •Here the effort is on understanding character from the standpoint of literary and psychology; however, there was a warning by Freud who tagged psychobiography as dangerous and remains on slippery ground. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

A Major Achievement 10 •Chapter Eight contains the psychoanalysis topic with regard to the British culture and European psychoanalytic culture prevalent between the wars. This chapter features the bond between polis and psyche during 1920s-1930s Europe. •Further, this chapter makes use of Hilda Doolittle 's experiences on psychoanalysis in Vienna being the main attention. •Chapter Nine is one the life of Hilda Doolittle, mostly her enthusiasm for acting and interest on writings on cinema with respect to her accounts of analytic sessions conducted with Freud. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

A Major Achievement 11 The significance of Chapter Ten is on the depiction of dreaming both in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As per the observation by Freud, dreams assist us in processing things taking place during the daytime. There are pivotal roles as highlighted in the chapter ten like questions of eloquent or dreaming the written history on dreams, some projects on dreaming, and the interplay between moving and still image in dreams. Chapter Eleven has a different approach where focus is on evaluating various drafts related to short stories on Woolf entitled as 'The Telescope Story'. In the present chapter, scene making, memory and optics are thoroughly researched as highly essential elements related to Woolf's ways of production. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

12 A Major Achievement •Chapter Twelve contains the content about Woolf's writing with emphasis on literary Modernism and how it was characterized by experimentation in form, structure, and technique. • There are many texts developed in this regard by Woolf and other Modernist authors that were more on episodic rather than chronological series. •Mixing order and freedom of thought including action, the works by Woolf demonstrate an intentional break with conventional styles of narration. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

Summary 13 • Laura Marcus by profession is a Professor of English at the Sussex University. She has the credit of publishing many essays and articles on the literature belonging to nineteenth as well as twentieth-century. • Laura further has the opportunity for coediting The History of Cambridge literature written in Twentieth-Century. • She is reckoned as a benefactor to 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die in 2012. • Laura Marcus is the recipient of ‘2008 James Russell Lowell Prize’ given by The Modern Language Association. • Laura Marcus focuses that 1895 has its significance when it comes to evaluating Modernism. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

Summary 14 • As per Laura Marcus, there was some change in the nineteenth century, i.e., a slow positioning of autobiography with the merit conferred to authorship. • There was prominence to the grading of values in the 19th century in context to self representation containing historical narrative occupying a bottom order due to the fact of they are involving a marginal degree of ‘seriousness’ in contrast to autobiography. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

Summary 15 • Laura Marcus mentions it: ‘The autobiography or memoirs give the distinction of being – apparently formal and inclusive – is definitely a significance between those having the ability of making self-reflection and by some who lack this.’ • The autobiography needs to be correlated with a narrative that is developmental in nature and orders time and personality as per the requirement of the goal; hence it is the looser and more about chronological structure as presented in the journal or diary that could never fulfil this ‘higher’ objective of autobiography. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL

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