A Study Of J.M. Coetzee’s Autobiographical Acts In Scenes From Provincial Life

With the publication of his autobiographical trilogy,Boyhood,Youth and Summertime,John Maxwell Coetzee exposes himself to the outside world.This thesis attempts to analyze how Coetzee explores the truth about self in the trilogy by taking autobiographical acts which are proposed by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson as investigations into and the process of self knowing.The autobiographical acts elaborated in the thesis include constructing multiple selves,reconstructing the life experiences of the historical self,and adopting polyphonic voices.In the autobiographical trilogy,Coetzee conducts the autobiographical act of constructing multiple and fluid identities such as a white boy marginalized by South African society,an Afrikaner by birth rather in the political sense,an Afrikaner identifying with the English,and a colonial diaspora.The complexity of the truth about self is captured by constructing these identities and by recreating the process of self-shaping within different specific cultural and historical contexts.In addition,the narrated self in the trilogy is not completely identical to Coetzee in history.Coetzee conducts the autobiographical act of re-organizing his life experiences in history to construct the truth about self beyond the factual level,showing that the self constructed in the trilogy is authentic to the narrating self’s subjective truth and his purpose at the moment of writing.By adopting heterogeneous narrative voices,multi-layered truth about self is manifested.The narrated self’s voice reveals the real state of the self when he is experiencing the events;the narrating self’s more mature voice exposes his attitude towards the past at the moment of narrating,and Coetzee’s worldviews which are also the truth about himself are illuminated in a comprehensive way.Although these autobiographical acts diverge from the traditional methods employed in autobiographical narration,the authenticity of the self of the biographee is strengthened instead of being weakened or distorted.The autobiographical acts carried out by Coetzee to rediscover and represent the truth of self are in line with the idea expressed by Coetzee in his critique work that truth and narration are closely correlated.