This article examines contemporary autofiction through the concept of the frame, drawing on perspectives on intentionalism associable with the journal nonsite, as well as on a Modernist understanding of artistic autonomy. It contends that the fundamental issues raised by autofiction, such as the blurring of the boundaries between life and art, author and work, and literature and the market, are most effectively addressed by emphasising the significance of the authorially established frame as a prerequisite for artistic meaning. Based on the intentionalist assertion that meaning and intention are one and the same, the article asserts that a literary work exists only insofar as it establishes boundaries that distinguish it from unframed life and mere documentation. Through an analysis of works by Karl Ove Knausgård, Édouard Louis, and Alison Bechdel, alongside critical debates by Dorothy Gallagher, Fredric Jameson, Lee Konstantinou, Anna Kornbluh, Andrew Osborne, Agata Sikora, and Adam Wrotz, the article demonstrates how autofiction repeatedly challenges the boundaries of its own frame. While some critics interpret this tendency as narcissism, market capture, or ideological immediacy, the authors contend that such diagnoses are frequently oversimplified.
Sala et al. (Wed,) studied this question.