Title:
Karl Ove Knausgård as Critic: Autoreception in and of 'Min kamp'.
Speaker: Ida Hummel Gabrielsen (University of Edinburgh)
Date & Time: 21/03/18, 5.30pm
Venue: G.06, 50 George Square
Organiser: LLC Works in Progress
Abstract:
Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård (1968) has been writing literary criticisms and essays since 1990 and published his first two novels in 1998 and 2004 respectively. Although both of these novels were highly successful, his renown as an author prior to Min kamp (2009-2011) is incomparable to the superstar status following the publication of this autobiographical work. Having been published as a serial publication over the course of two years, the autobiographical work, and the author himself, gained an enormous following of readers, while also receiving a great deal of criticism. The sixth and final volume of Min kamp deals explicitly with the ramifications of writing and publishing the five previous volumes, leaving the sixth volume to be understood as a metanarrative to the project as a whole, where Knausgård conducts a critical evaluation of himself as an author and the success of his work.
I argue that the self-criticism, or autoreception is not limited to the final volume, but a prominent trait of the project itself. This can be traced not only in Min kamp, but through Knausgård’s texts written both before and after Min kamp. In this seminar I discuss three types of autoreception in and of Min kamp: 1) the implicit autoreception that occurs when an author writes criticism of other authors’ texts. 2) The explicit autoreception that occurs when the author re-reads his own texts, producing metaliterary commentary. Finally, 3) the autoreception that occurs when an author re-writes his own texts.
Biography:
Ida is currently a third-year PhD student in Comparative Literature at the the University of Edinburgh. Previously she studied for a BA Comparative Literature and Art History (2009-2013) in Lund, Sweden, and a MSc in Comparative Literature here in Edinburgh (2013/2014). Her PhD thesis explores autoreception in Karl Ove Knausgård's authorship, focusing on his autobiographical work Min kamp.