Peter Childs
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748620432
- eISBN:
- 9780748671700
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748620432.003.0015
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The study of autobiography has been resurgent in recent decades, and the genre is often now discussed by historians, literary critics and others alongside biographies, memoirs, letters, diaries, and ...
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The study of autobiography has been resurgent in recent decades, and the genre is often now discussed by historians, literary critics and others alongside biographies, memoirs, letters, diaries, and reminiscences – as well as works more conventionally considered ‘history’ or ‘fiction’ -- under the banner of life writing (the term ‘self-life-writing’ is Avrom Fleishman’s). One reason for this is the rise of interdisciplinary areas of study that have found autobiography to be a particularly useful form of writing, and so have accorded it a distinctive place in the study of both authenticity and alterity. In the 1970s, women’s studies, American studies, ethnic and black studies all started to turn to autobiography for voices of ‘experience’ from within, as James Olney sees it. Or, as Martin Amis puts it in his own Experience: ‘what everyone has in them, these days, is not a novel but a memoir. We live in an age of mass loquacity. We are all writing it or at any rate talking it: the memoir, the apologia, the c.v., the cri de Coeur. Nothing, for now, can compete with experience – so unanswerably authentic, and so liberally and democratically dispensed.’Less
The study of autobiography has been resurgent in recent decades, and the genre is often now discussed by historians, literary critics and others alongside biographies, memoirs, letters, diaries, and reminiscences – as well as works more conventionally considered ‘history’ or ‘fiction’ -- under the banner of life writing (the term ‘self-life-writing’ is Avrom Fleishman’s). One reason for this is the rise of interdisciplinary areas of study that have found autobiography to be a particularly useful form of writing, and so have accorded it a distinctive place in the study of both authenticity and alterity. In the 1970s, women’s studies, American studies, ethnic and black studies all started to turn to autobiography for voices of ‘experience’ from within, as James Olney sees it. Or, as Martin Amis puts it in his own Experience: ‘what everyone has in them, these days, is not a novel but a memoir. We live in an age of mass loquacity. We are all writing it or at any rate talking it: the memoir, the apologia, the c.v., the cri de Coeur. Nothing, for now, can compete with experience – so unanswerably authentic, and so liberally and democratically dispensed.’
Sophia Brown, Rachel Gregory Fox, and Ahmad Qabaha
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781800348271
- eISBN:
- 9781800852198
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781800348271.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Life-writing that emerges from Palestine and the diaspora is marked by its emphasis on the collective. Following the proliferation of single-author, book-length works during the previous ...
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Life-writing that emerges from Palestine and the diaspora is marked by its emphasis on the collective. Following the proliferation of single-author, book-length works during the previous quarter-century, this chapter turns to focus on contemporary English-language anthologies, which gather together connected yet distinct voices through short-form life writing. This sense of communality, alongside a desire to respond to contemporary crises, is central to these anthologies of Palestinian writing. Often to a greater extent than single-author texts, anthologies actively draw attention to the fact that while the predicaments faced by Palestinians are individually experienced, they are also widespread and shared. Such texts, individually meaningful but also conversant with wider concerns and messages of solidarity, this chapter argues, are ideal components of anthologies that position themselves as future-orientated and express a desire for change at the outset.Less
Life-writing that emerges from Palestine and the diaspora is marked by its emphasis on the collective. Following the proliferation of single-author, book-length works during the previous quarter-century, this chapter turns to focus on contemporary English-language anthologies, which gather together connected yet distinct voices through short-form life writing. This sense of communality, alongside a desire to respond to contemporary crises, is central to these anthologies of Palestinian writing. Often to a greater extent than single-author texts, anthologies actively draw attention to the fact that while the predicaments faced by Palestinians are individually experienced, they are also widespread and shared. Such texts, individually meaningful but also conversant with wider concerns and messages of solidarity, this chapter argues, are ideal components of anthologies that position themselves as future-orientated and express a desire for change at the outset.
