In and Out, or the Memoir’s Many Points of View

The aim of this paper is to investigate the concept of the point of view with regard to the genre of memoir. Having provided a brief discussion of the genre’s poetics and various, often conflicting attempts at establishing its generic indexes as well as its generic identity, the paper will examine several contemporary specimens of the memoir and will try to identify the occurrence of Gérard Genette’s modal triad (i.e. internal focalization, external focalization, and zero focalization) in their respective narratives. What is more, the paper will attempt to conclude whether such a narratological category as “mode” can be considered a generative tool as far as the memoir’s genology is concerned and, if so, what overall implications this recognition might have for understanding the memoir’s poetics and its traditional understanding as a genre of non-fiction.