Autofictionalization

High Theory

Claus Elholm Andersen talks about autofictionalization, a mode of narration that characterizes autotfiction, where the narrative consciousness or voice is placed with the experiencing character and not the narrator. Of particular interest here are texts produced after the financial crisis of 2008 which exemplify this mode, most importantly Karl Ove Knausgård’s series My Struggle (2009-2011).

Claus Elholm Andersen is the Paul and Renate Madsen Assistant Professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In his research, he is interested in the novel and in questions of fiction and fictionality: What it is, how it works, and what it implies. He is currently finishing up a book project on Karl Ove Knausgård and autofiction, titled The Very Edge of Fiction: Karl Ove Knausgård and the Autofictional Novel, in which he argues that Knausgård consciously engages with, and undermines, a long critical history of equating novels with fiction. He recently co-edited a special issue of Scandinavian Studies, with Dean Krouk, on Karl Ove Knausgård’s My Struggle and edited the first scholarly anthology on Knausgård, published in Scandinavia in 2017. His latest publications are an article on Danish novelist Helle Helle in Edda in 2019 and an article on Henrik Pontoppidan’s novel Lucky-Per in Scandinavian Studies.

Image: © 2021 Saronik Bosu

Music used in promotional material: ‘North’ by Sergey Cheremisinov

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