Dr Matt Prout
- School: School of English, Drama and Film
- Mentor: Dr Adam Kelly
Thinking and Living in Contemporary Autofiction
My project explores the relationship between intellectual and practical activity in contemporary works of autofiction and autotheory. What is the relationship between what we think and how we act? What is the role of philosophical or theoretical activity in everyday life? What is, or what should be, the relationship between theory and practice? I argue that autofictional and autotheoretical texts are particularly well suited to an exploration of these questions. These texts combine autobiographical writing with fictional or theoretical material; they are texts that produce thought, while also representing the life of the thinker. They are thereby uniquely placed to suggest the ways in which thought can emerge from, interact with, or rub up against lived experience. My project examines works by writers such as Teju Cole, Sheila Heti, Chris Kraus, Ben Lerner, Maggie Nelson, Jenny Offill, and Claudia Rankine. My first monograph, David Foster Wallace and the Question of Scepticism is forthcoming with Edinburgh University Press (September 2024).
Contact details:
Email: (opens in a new window)matt.prout@ucd.ie