Document Type
Thesis
Degree
Master of Arts (MA)
Major/Program
English
First Advisor's Name
Richard Schwartz
First Advisor's Committee Title
Committee Chair
Second Advisor's Name
Bruce Harvey
Third Advisor's Name
Ana Luszczynska
Date of Defense
6-17-2009
Abstract
The purpose of this thesis was to explore why and how the author Dave Eggers subverts the genre of traditional autobiography in his memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I compared Eggers' work to Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and William S. Burroughs' Junky. I found that like Stein and Burroughs, Eggers utilized various rhetorical devices outside of traditional autobiography because he could not find the means to express himself within the genre. Eggers employed various rhetorical methods reserved for fictional texts, such as stream of consciousness, characterization, and irony, in order to reconcile his feelings towards his parents' deaths and render those feelings in his memoir.
I established that Eggers concluded his memoir with impossibility of arriving at one Meaning that could summate his tragic experience. Thus, I proved that Eggers gave the reader the only authentic interpretation he could: the memoir as a small, incomplete glimpse into his life.
Identifier
FI14031607
Recommended Citation
Alvarez, Krystal, "This was uncalled for : Dave Eggers' A heartbreaking work of staggering genius subverts the genre of traditional autobiography as an attempt at rendering his life" (2009). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1265.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1265
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