A room knows what it knew: The embodiment of grief in auto-fictional narratives

Zhao, Yuxin 2024. A room knows what it knew: The embodiment of grief in auto-fictional narratives. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

The creative component of the thesis, A Room Knows What It Knew, is a non-linear novel in terms of both time and form. It combines techniques of auto-fiction and speculative science fiction, while also utilising aspects of the personal essay. It weaves together fragments from three time periods: the present, when the protagonist, a young Chinese woman living abroad by herself, and her family grapple with her grandfather’s Alzheimer’s disease and her grandmother’s injuries; the past, when the protagonist is a child living with her grandparents, hearing about how the family survived disastrous times; an idealised future, when both illness and injury are imagined away by means of speculative scientific theories. Throughout the novel, family photographs are analysed alongside famous paintings, and well-known Chinese folktales adapted into cartoons or opera performances are inspected critically. Grief Has A Body, the critical component, reflects on both the novel and the writing process through four main themes: the often overlooked necessity to properly grieve for the elderly; the choice to write in English rather than Mandarin Chinese; the ways in which the novel uses and twists Chinese folktales; and its depiction of desire, including but not limited to physical desire and the desire to survive, and the intermingling of desire and violence. This component draws upon the critical work of Roland Barthes, Ruben Borg, Martin Hägglund, Susan Sontag, George Bataille, and Julia Kristeva, among others, as well as the creative work of Giorgio Bassani, Primo Levi, H. D., Simone De Beauvoir, alongside the visual work of Lucian Freud.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Schools > English, Communication and Philosophy
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PE English P Language and Literature > PR English literature
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	15 July 2025
Last Modified:	17 Jul 2025 11:15
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/179457

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