The works Kristalni čas (1990) by Lojze Kovačič and Zaznamovana (1992) by Nedeljka Pirjevec continue the tradition of the existential-modern narrative patterns and of modernist autobiography and deviate from the typical postmodern trends in the literature of the early 1990s. They were accepted as novels, but their synthetic genericity also corresponds to the non-fictional genre of autobiography. After discussing the existing terms, the author decides on a new generic class, i.e.,
“the novel as autobiography”. It includes works with a similar combination of fiction and non-fiction features, while its constitutive rule presupposes the recurrence of the key features of autobiography on modal, content, and partially on formal levels. The author argues for the inclusion of both works in the new generic class, that corresponds the established postmodern practice that not all literature is fictional, on the basis of the pragmatic model for distinguishing between fiction and non-fiction.
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