Abstract
How did the "cognitive turn" in narratology change the theoretical attitudes to the autobiographical texts? What is the diference between life stories, autobiographical memories or narrative identity on the one hand and autobiographical novels or autobiographies on the other hand? Where is the boundary between the psychology and the cognitive narratology, when we analyze the literary autobiographies and when we talk about their authors? Despite these problematic issues, in recent decades narratology and literary theory have been inspired by theoretical concepts of psychologists and philosophers, such as Jens Brockmeier, Jerome Bruner or Paul Ricoeur. In this paper we would like to look at the literary genre of autobiography in the context of the "positioning theory", one of the results of this new cooperation between literary narratology and the cognitive psychology.
The genre of autobiography is often situated on border-line between fiction and non-fiction; autobiography refers to real characters and events, but at the same time it is a literary work of art, a verbal construct in which the representation of reality is subject to the intentions of the author. Autobiographies frequently use the same narrative schemes as the fictional texts and for the adequate interpretation of the text of autobiography it is necessary to ask why the author does it and what effect these strategies have.
The author displays him-/herself in the text in accordance with a specific pattern and plot and his/her positioning is therefore a matter of a selected and combined narrative - thematic and compositional - technique. The methodology of the "positioning theory" is based on the relational character of self that creates the world in the process of narrating and manifests his/her relationships - i.e. his/her position towards others.
These theses will be demonstrated primarily in the autobiography of the Czech woman author Heda Margolius-Kovály Under a Cruel Star.