Writing the Living and the Dead. The Dutch Writer Hella S. Haasse as (Auto)Biographer

Authors

  • Jane Fenoulhet

Keywords:

Hella Haasse, Life Writing, Biographical and Autobiographical Writing, Nomadic Subjectivity

Abstract

This article is about Hella Haasse as a life writer. It considers her life writing in the context of her work as a whole before focusing on her experimentation with biographical and autobiographical writing as textual performances of selves. I argue that the relationship between the writer and her historical, biographical subject is affected by her attempts to grapple with her own life, past and present, in autobiographical texts. More specifically, I analyse Haasse’s literary experiment in terms of multiple, nomadic subjectivity with an emphasis on Haasse’s textual representation of processes of becoming.

Author Biography

Jane Fenoulhet

Jane Fenoulhet teaches Dutch literature, history and culture with a particular focus on the twentieth century, as well as translation studies at University College London. She is particularly interested in women’s writing; her book Making the Personal Political.Dutch Women Writers 1919-1970 (2007) combines literary and cultural history. She publishes regularly on topics in language and literature pedagogy, and is currently researching a book on the Dutch novelist and travel writer Cees Nooteboom.

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Published

2012-12-02

How to Cite

Fenoulhet, J. (2012). Writing the Living and the Dead. The Dutch Writer Hella S. Haasse as (Auto)Biographer. Journal of Dutch Literature, 3(2). Retrieved from https://www.journalofdutchliterature.org/index.php/jdl/article/view/31

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Section

Articles