Regis, A. (2011) Competing Life Narratives: Portraits of Vita Sackville-West. Life Writing, 8 (3). pp. 287-300. ISSN 1448-4528
Abstract
This article sets out to examine the fraught, often contested relationship between multiple and competing life narratives, taking as its focus the case of Vita Sackville-West and her infamous love affair with Violet Trefusis. Vita wrote her account of this relationship in a short, autobiographical fragment (1920–21), and this text now forms the basis of nearly all subsequent accounts of her life. By examining how Vita's confession has been appropriated and revised by successive generations of the Nicolson family—in Nigel Nicolson's biography of his parents, Portrait of a Marriage (1973) and Adam Nicolson's recent television documentary, Sissinghurst (2009)—this article will identify the relational structures that exist between texts and across different life-writing genres and media. Contemporary studies of life writing and relationality have emphasised the intratextual connections between subjects. By contrast, the example of Vita Sackville-West highlights the importance of intertextuality. This article explores how intertextual relations—the construction of lives in response to extant accounts; the repetition, revision and accumulation of life narratives—has served to sustain an open-ended industry of life writing.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2011 Taylor & Francis (Routledge). This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Life Writing. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | relational life writing; intertextuality; documentary; Vita Sackville-West |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > School of English (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 20 Feb 2017 10:09 |
Last Modified: | 30 Jun 2017 15:27 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/14484528.2011.579241 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis (Routledge) |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/14484528.2011.579241 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:109612 |