Derek Jarman, Smiling in Slow Motion

John Mepham (Kingston University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kerry Myler (Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1994

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Autobiography (literary)
- Journal/ Diary

Resources

Derek Jarman wrote a series of autobiographical texts, scripts and journals, in which he again and again revisited his past and continually reinvented the forms of self-writing. The sequence includes Dancing Ledge (1984), The Last of England (1987) (republished as Kicking the Pricks (1996)), Modern Nature (1991), At Your Own Risk (1992), Smiling in Slow Motion (2000), Blue (1993), and Chroma (1994).

“I'm continually reinventing my own past, it is not static,” Jarman writes in these journals. Not only does he reinvent his past he also reinvents himself and the genre of autobiography. The non-chronological “autobiographical collage”, or compilation, that he used in …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1432 words

Citation: Mepham, John. "Smiling in Slow Motion". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 March 2002 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2005, accessed 25 November 2024.]

Save this article