This essay discusses W.G. Sebald’s use of biographical and autobiographical elements in his literary writing. A diachronic overview retraces Sebald’s evolving use of (auto-)biographical elements from After Nature, Vertigo and The Emigrants to The Rings of Saturn and finally Austerlitz. To do so, this essay outlines, firstly, which protagonists are based on real historical figures and which source-material Sebald used for their literary transposition. Secondly, this essay highlights the relationship between the biographies of persons of historical renown – such as writers like Franz Kafka, Vladimir Nabokov and Stendhal – and those biographies taken from Sebald’s private life. These Sebald modelled after the lives of friends and acquaintances. Their inclusion with changed names – such as Paul Bereyter, Max Ferber or Jacques Austerlitz, raise questions concerning the relationship between truth and fiction. A third, central concern is the discussion of Sebald’s literary techniques and the various ways he introduces and intersects (auto-)biographical texts, photos, and illustrations to create a biographical pastiche.

The second half of the book turns to the novels of Thackeray, Trollope, and Meredith to demonstrate how stylistic virtues offer an historicized hermeneutic that can change our understanding of texts and Victorian prose forms. It begins with William Makepeace Thackeray because he was considered by many to be the period’s most capable stylist, though few understand this assessment today. The fault lies in part with the traditions of Thackerayan criticism. Obsessed with the quality of his narrative voice, many have focused on Thackeray’s unity (or disunity) of tone, leading to dubious interpretations of key early works. By rethinking these interpretations, which stem from thematically oriented criticism, Chapter 4 shows that there is a difference between Thackeray’s satirical personality and the protean adaptability of his stylistic guises. The consequence for readers of major works like Pendennis or The Newcomes is a hyper-awareness of “grace,” a form of stylistic versatility and detachment that exists in productive tension with the author’s other ethical attitudes.

Ostensibly a translation of Sophocles' Antigone, Anne Carson's Antigonick (2012) is in fact a genre-bending, hybrid construct which defies boundaries. It is a crossbreed between translation, adaptation, and rewriting, as well as between text and image. It incorporates a great variety of discourse types and literary or paraliterary genres, and amalgamates hand-inked blocks of text with original colour drawings (by Bianca Stone). This 'transtextual palimpsest' engages in a fascinating dialogue not only with Sophocles' Antigone but also with its translators and commentators, as well as with authors as disparate as Hegel, Beckett, Brecht, Butler, and Irigaray. At times provocative, stirring, funny, and often all of the above, Carson's Antigonick asks us to push the boundaries of genre, textuality, and visuality towards a new synthesis, which may capture something of the unity of speech, visuality, music, and movement that Greek drama managed to achieve.

But we often loathe others having a laugh at our expense. Therefore it hardly comes as a surprise when copyright owners aggressively seek to enforce their monopoly right against others who use their works for the purposes of parody, satire, caricature, and pastiche.

Examines less prototypical/less commonly studied types of reuse, including limited reuse, historical résumé, and pastiche; also considers how other modes of relating to earlier tradition (e.g., use of known themes or characters) resemble and differ from reuse.