The Routledge Companion to Biofiction

The Routledge Companion to Biofiction provides readers with the history, origins, and evolution of this popular genre. Featuring contributions from leading scholars in the field, this authoritative collection foregrounds analyses of biofiction's core foundations through contemporary debates.

The volume is organized into seven sections: Histories of biofiction; Theoretical reflections on biofiction; Biofiction, national models and (trans)national constructions; Biofiction as political intervention; Biofictional case studies; Activating lives: early modern women; and Authorial reflections. This groundbreaking collection features works that refine our understanding of the genesis and evolution of biofiction; theorize its unique and distinctive modes of signifying; reflect on its value for the future and social justice; chart new approaches for doing biofictional analysis; and offer insights from authors of biofiction into the creative process.

This is the first collection to bring together the two main schools of interpreting biofiction – the Francophone and Anglophone – while also shedding light on biofictions in many languages, from or about many continents, and offering a platform to established and new voices alike. It will be essential reading for students as well as advanced scholars interested in biographical fiction.

Lucia Boldrini is Professor Emerita of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the Centre for Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK and Honorary Professor of Comparative Literature at University College London. She has published on comparative and world literature, biofiction, and modernism and the Middle Ages. Her books include Autobiographies of Others: Historical Subjects and Literary Fiction (Routledge, 2012).

Laura Cernat (she/they) is a FWO postdoctoral researcher at KU Leuven, Belgium, who has published on biofiction, autofiction and autotheory, cultural memory, Virginia Woolf, and Lucia Joyce, and organized the 2021 conference Biofiction as World Literature.

Alexandre Gefen is "Directeur de Recherche" (Full Research Professor) at the CNRS Theory and History of Modern Art and Literature Laboratory at Sorbonne Nouvelle University, France. He is the author of numerous articles and essays on culture, contemporary literature, and literary theory.

Michael Lackey is Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota, USA, where he teaches courses about twentieth- and twenty-first-century intellectual, political, and literary history. His publications include Biofiction: An Introduction (Routledge, 2021) and Biofictional Histories, Mutations, and Forms (Routledge, 2016).