"Are you giving yourself to me to make a self?": Sacrifice, Pronoun Shifts, and the Creation of Self in H. D.'s Prose Works

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"Are you giving yourself to me to make a self?": Sacrifice, Pronoun Shifts, and the Creation of Self in H. D.'s Prose Works

Melin Schyllert, K; (2020) "Are you giving yourself to me to make a self?": Sacrifice, Pronoun Shifts, and the Creation of Self in H. D.'s Prose Works. The Space Between: literature and culture, 1914-1945 , 15 (6) (In press). Green open access

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Abstract

Experimental shifts between first-, second-, and third-person narration continuously create and destroy the narrative self in H. D.’s prose. These shifts signify movement between various levels of self-consciousness or various levels of experiencing the self by dissolving the borders of the narrator. H. D.’s novels describe the intricacies of searching for the self and the apparent paradox of finding it precisely when it has been given up or sacrificed. Paradoxically, the self needs to be destroyed in order to be recreated. Moreover, her narrative pronoun shifts show that the self needs to be immersed in a larger, shared experience of intersubjectivity to grow and develop, even though this means that the borders of the self lose definition. In this way, H. D. not only navigates the winding road of self-development, but also explores what it means to share universal experiences, primarily those of sacrifice and destruction. H. D.’s works in general are often read as autobiographical and primarily relevant as a key to understanding the lives of herself and her contemporaries. This article shows how H. D.’s use of pronoun shifts indicates a concern with her own subjective experiences, but also with intersubjectivity and shared experiences across time and space. Using experiments with pronoun shifts, H. D. shows how personal narratives become universal and how universal narratives become personal, thereby creating autobiographical works that are relevant in a broader context.

Type:	Article
Title:	"Are you giving yourself to me to make a self?": Sacrifice, Pronoun Shifts, and the Creation of Self in H. D.'s Prose Works
Open access status:	An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Publisher version:	https://scalar.usc.edu/works/the-space-between-lit...
Language:	English
Additional information:	This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
UCL classification:	UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > VP: Research
URI:	https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10091299