In fiction, you-narratives written in the last decade across the world parody the form of second-person address found in advertising, self-help and 'how-to' books while anticipating shame and culpability. To establish the significance of affect, this book returns to second-person narrative theory's neglected origins in the theory of autobiography. This book examines the use of you across media: novels and memoirs by Paul Auster, Carmen Maria Machado, Alejandro Zambra, Vendela Vida, Christine Angot, Clarice Lispector, Charles Yu, and Caleb Azumah Nelson; poems by Claudia Rankine and Phoebe Waller-Bridge's play and television series Fleabag (2016-19). These texts are brought into dialogue with narratology, philosophy, literary criticism and critical race theory to illustrate how the second-person pronoun's capacity to address the real-world reader inevitably renders such narratives a site for political and ethical contestation.
| ISBN: | 9781399546959 |
| Publication date: | 31st October 2025 |
| Author: | |
| Publisher: | Edinburgh University Press |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 256 pages |
| Genres: |
Biographies & Autobiographies Literary studies: from c 2000 Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers |