Narrative Self-Reference and Autobiographical Language-Games in Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory

The field of autobiographical studies has exceeded the boundaries of literature and textual productions as autobiographical memory is considered a fundamental cognitive function related to a sense of personal identity. As best evidences of our narrative self-communications and identity language-games, autobiographies disclose the illusive power of language in purporting a unitary self. This article studies the significance of the first-person pronoun in the narrative structure of autobiographical memory and its connection to sense of self in Vladimir Nabokov’s autobiography Speak, Memory. Drawing upon Later Wittgenstein’s no-reference view of “I”, this research examines how Speak, Memory illustrates the lack of reference of the first-person pronoun in autobiographical memory and explores its formal and inventive emergence in narrative compositions. As the title conveys, the self does not speak in memory; it is spoken in the compositions of autobiographical memory.

Keywords:

first-person pronoun , autobiographical memory , personal identity , life-story , identity language-games.