Berätta då : En narratologisk och tematisk analys av alla vilda och Kärlek i Europa

Sammanfattning: The focus of this study is on how the identity narrative is constructed and how the narrative effects the reader’s perception of the protagonist’s identity in the autobiographical novels Kärlek i Europa and alla vilda by Birgitta Stenberg. The discourse of autobiographical writing is used to analyse the novels with the perspective that an autobiographical text communicates with it’s readers. By close-reading the pattern of the narrative becomes visible. The analys of the narrative show that the narrator changes positions throughout the novels. In effect, this means that the narrator and the protagonist sometimes occupies the same position in the text, and sometimes not. By mapping the narrator’s positions and by separating the author, narrator and protagonist the narrative structure emerges as complex. The authors position and the referentiality to something ”real” outside the text creates a picture of the protagonist as a part of the awareness of gender discrimination toward female writers. It also raises the issue of the historical discrimination toward LGBTQ persons and ethnic groups. The narrator’s changing position re-structures time and space by inserting different timelines. Through the historical, the traveling and the future timelines the development of the protagonist’s identity emerges. In contrast to the genre bildungsroman the identity narrative becomes visible as a self-reflexive project. The reflexive project allows the narrator to compare the identity of the self through time. This structure also invites the reader to co-create the protagonist identity alongside the narrator.