Autofiction, Emotions, and Humour: A Playfully Serious Affective Mode

This book depicts that autofictional texts often make use of humour and play in a productive and meaningful way, tackling issues like human rights violations, historical, collective and personal trauma, and struggle with psychological or physical illness and abuse. It was originally published as special issue of Life Writing.

Alexandra Effe is Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oslo, Norway. She is the author of J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Narrative Transgression (2017) and co-editor of The Autofictional (2022). She has published articles in the Journal for Narrative Theory, Modern Fiction Studies, and Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

Arnaud Schmitt is a Professor at the University of Bordeaux, France. His field of research is American literature, and he has also worked extensively on the concepts of autofiction and self-narration. He is the author, among others, of The Phenomenology of Autobiography: Making it Real (2017) and the forthcoming The Photographer as Autobiographer (2022).