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Toing and froing in Stevenson’s construction of personal history in some of the later essays (1880-94)
Language
EN
Article de revue
This item was published in
Journal of Stevenson Studies. 2018-11-24, vol. 14, p. 5-17
English Abstract
Stevenson’s later essays (1880-94) are marked by a growing nostalgia for his younger self and he regularly weaves into them recollections of childhood and early adulthood experience. He had already written of his boyhood ...Read more >
Stevenson’s later essays (1880-94) are marked by a growing nostalgia for his younger self and he regularly weaves into them recollections of childhood and early adulthood experience. He had already written of his boyhood with a more overtly autobiographical style and structure in the unpublished accounts entitled ‘Notes of Childhood’ (1873) and ‘Memoirs of Himself’ (1880). In these later essays, however, as his star rises and public interest in his life reaches a crescendo, he fragments the account of his earlier self, scattering clues to the origins and development of his present personal identity across his writing. The discontinuous nature of the account is reflected in the subtitles of certain of the essays – ‘Random Memories’, ‘More Random Memories’. In this article, I propose to examine the somewhat unsettling effect created by a toing and froing between past, present and future presences; between the actual, lingering and virtual selves dispersed throughout the later essays.Read less <