“Summertime” by J.M.Coetzee and the problems of literary (auto)biography

The paper analyses “Summertime” (2009), the final book by J. M. Coetzee’s autobiographical trilogy, and the key characteristics of its genre. In “Summertime” the author appeals to the form of a biography as the most objective method of (self)discovery in comparison with autobiography. The paper focuses on the ways the text reflects upon its genre in order to identify the distinctive features of contemporary autobiographical writing when compared with the genre conventions. The analysis of the genre and composition peculiarities of “Summertime” reveals the traits of the character and the degree of Coetzee’s reflection on the genre conventions of the writer’s autobiography.