Alterity in Autobiography: Charles Lamb's "The Essays of Elia"

Nazım Çapkın

doi:10.33919/esnbu.24.2.3

Alterity in Autobiography: Charles Lamb's "The Essays of Elia"

Authors

Nazım Çapkın Istanbul Yeni Yüzyıl University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.24.2.3

Keywords:

autobiography, otobiography, otherness, alterity, deconstruction

Abstract

This article scrutinizes the unorthodox turn in Charles Lamb’s autobiographical writing through the figure of Elia with its potential to test the limits of alterity and one’s representation of oneself while challenging at the same time the immunity of self as the origin of knowledge and truth. In so doing, this study also maintains that Elia as the autonomous entity calls into question the authority of the writer as well as any claim on teleology and coherence in the act of writing one’s own life specifically. To this end, explication of some of the key passages in the essays is informed by Jacques Derrida’s theoretical stance towards autobiography in his seminal work The Ear of the Other. In this vein, the article suggests that Elia’s individuality and self-consciousness in the essays manifest in unorthodox ways the simultaneous interpretative potential of the figure as the reader of Lamb’s life in making.

Author Biography

Nazım Çapkın, Istanbul Yeni Yüzyıl University

Dr. Nazım Çapkın has completed his PhD in English at the Department of Western Languages and Literatures, Boğaziçi University with his dissertation titled "Messianism and Apocalypse in the 20th Century Thought and Modernist Literature" in January 2024. He received his B.A. from the Department of English Language and Literature at Ege University in 2008 and his M.A. in English Literature from Boğaziçi University in 2011(M.A. Thesis: At SwimTwo-Birds & If on a Winter's Night a Traveler: A Study of Metafiction Theory, Intertextuality and Authorship). His research interests include but are not limited to comparative literature, Modernist novel, Biblical literature and Classics.

References

Bruner, J. S. (1984). In Search of Mind: Essays in Autobiography. University of Michigan Press.

Derrida, J. (1985). The Ear of the Other. University of Nebraska Press.

Haven, R. (1963). The Romantic Art of Charles Lamb. ELH, 30(2), 137-146. https://doi.org/10.2307/2872086

Lamb, C. (2011). The Essays of Elia. Barnes and Noble.

Monsman, G. (1983). Confessions of a Prosaic Dreamer: Charles Lamb’s Art of Autobiography. The John Hopkins University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/2872869

Jessup, B. (1954). The Mind of Elia. Journal of History of Ideas, 15(2), 246-259. https://doi.org/10.2307/2707770

Smith, S. (1993). Subjectivity, Identity, and the Body: Women’s Autobiographical Practices in the Twentieth Century. Indiana University Press.

Zeiger, W. (1990). The Circular and the Natural Authority of Form. Rhetoric Review, 8(2), 208-219. https://doi.org/10.1080/07350199009388894

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Published

2024-12-22

How to Cite

Çapkın, N. (2024). Alterity in Autobiography: Charles Lamb’s "The Essays of Elia". English Studies at NBU, 10(2), 264–275. https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.24.2.3

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Issue

Vol. 10 No. 2 (2024)

Section

Articles

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