Larry R Squire (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195380101
- eISBN:
- 9780199864362
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195380101.001.0001
- Subject:
- Neuroscience, History of Neuroscience
This book contains a collection of autobiographical chapters by notable senior scientists who discuss the major events that shaped their discoveries and their influences, as well as the people who ...
More
This book contains a collection of autobiographical chapters by notable senior scientists who discuss the major events that shaped their discoveries and their influences, as well as the people who inspired them and helped shape their careers as neuroscientists. Each entry also includes a complete CV so that the book tells the story of their rise through the ranks as they achieved some of the highest honors in neuroscience.Less
This book contains a collection of autobiographical chapters by notable senior scientists who discuss the major events that shaped their discoveries and their influences, as well as the people who inspired them and helped shape their careers as neuroscientists. Each entry also includes a complete CV so that the book tells the story of their rise through the ranks as they achieved some of the highest honors in neuroscience.
Farah Jasmine Griffin
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195088960
- eISBN:
- 9780199855148
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195088960.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This book is the first sustained study of migration as it is portrayed in African American literature, letters, music, and painting. It identifies the “migration narrative” as a dominant African ...
More
This book is the first sustained study of migration as it is portrayed in African American literature, letters, music, and painting. It identifies the “migration narrative” as a dominant African American cultural tradition. Covering a period from 1923 to 1992, the book provides close readings of novels, autobiographies, songs, poetry, and painting; in so doing it carves out a framework that allows for a more inclusive reading of African American cultural forms.Less
This book is the first sustained study of migration as it is portrayed in African American literature, letters, music, and painting. It identifies the “migration narrative” as a dominant African American cultural tradition. Covering a period from 1923 to 1992, the book provides close readings of novels, autobiographies, songs, poetry, and painting; in so doing it carves out a framework that allows for a more inclusive reading of African American cultural forms.
Ronney Mourad and Dianne Guenin-Lelle
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199841127
- eISBN:
- 9780199919536
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199841127.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
This book presents the first-ever English translation of the Prison Narratives written by the seventeenth-century French mystic and Quietist, Jeanne Guyon (1648-1717). Guyon’s narrative describes her ...
More
This book presents the first-ever English translation of the Prison Narratives written by the seventeenth-century French mystic and Quietist, Jeanne Guyon (1648-1717). Guyon’s narrative describes her confinement between 1695 and 1703 in various prisons, including the dreaded Bastille. It also maps, in moving and unforgettable detail, the political and religious hegemony that sought to destroy her reputation and erase her from history. Guyon kept the text private. It therefore remained undiscovered for almost three centuries until an archival version was found and published in 1992 under the title Récits de Captivité (Prison Narratives). In order to make the text accessible to contemporary readers, the translation includes annotations identifying unfamiliar people, places, events and technical terms. The introduction provides a brief biography of Guyon and an analysis of the Quietist Affair, the religious and political conflict responsible for her persecution. Since this text constitutes the final, private, part of Guyon’s autobiography (the public portion of which was published in 1720 and remains in print today), the introduction discusses the composition of her autobiography as a whole and situates it in her larger body of work. It also includes an analysis of various historical, literary, and theological aspects of Guyon’s prison writings.Less
This book presents the first-ever English translation of the Prison Narratives written by the seventeenth-century French mystic and Quietist, Jeanne Guyon (1648-1717). Guyon’s narrative describes her confinement between 1695 and 1703 in various prisons, including the dreaded Bastille. It also maps, in moving and unforgettable detail, the political and religious hegemony that sought to destroy her reputation and erase her from history. Guyon kept the text private. It therefore remained undiscovered for almost three centuries until an archival version was found and published in 1992 under the title Récits de Captivité (Prison Narratives). In order to make the text accessible to contemporary readers, the translation includes annotations identifying unfamiliar people, places, events and technical terms. The introduction provides a brief biography of Guyon and an analysis of the Quietist Affair, the religious and political conflict responsible for her persecution. Since this text constitutes the final, private, part of Guyon’s autobiography (the public portion of which was published in 1720 and remains in print today), the introduction discusses the composition of her autobiography as a whole and situates it in her larger body of work. It also includes an analysis of various historical, literary, and theological aspects of Guyon’s prison writings.
James Treadwell
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199262977
- eISBN:
- 9780191718724
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199262977.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
The book describes and analyses the condition of autobiographical writing in Britain during the Romantic period. As well as chapter-length studies of major autobiographical works by Coleridge, Byron, ...
More
The book describes and analyses the condition of autobiographical writing in Britain during the Romantic period. As well as chapter-length studies of major autobiographical works by Coleridge, Byron, and Lamb, it provides a wide-ranging account of the rapidly expanding field of published self-writing during the period. The book also demonstrates that the category of ‘autobiography’ emerged in the literary public sphere during these years, and that instances of autobiographical writing need to be read in relation to the conditions under which they were circulated and read. Part I deals with the emergence of a sense of genre: the idea of autobiography, as it made its way into the literary environment. Part II examines how the anxieties and restrictions attendant upon the idea of self-writing are reflected in published texts, which present themselves as autobiographies. Part III focuses on readings of autobiographical works, exploring some examples of their representations of the situation of self-writing, and considering what sort of readings are involved when we interpret a given text as an autobiography. Overall, the book emphasizes the uncertain and contested transactions between Romantic autobiographical writing and the literary public sphere.Less
The book describes and analyses the condition of autobiographical writing in Britain during the Romantic period. As well as chapter-length studies of major autobiographical works by Coleridge, Byron, and Lamb, it provides a wide-ranging account of the rapidly expanding field of published self-writing during the period. The book also demonstrates that the category of ‘autobiography’ emerged in the literary public sphere during these years, and that instances of autobiographical writing need to be read in relation to the conditions under which they were circulated and read. Part I deals with the emergence of a sense of genre: the idea of autobiography, as it made its way into the literary environment. Part II examines how the anxieties and restrictions attendant upon the idea of self-writing are reflected in published texts, which present themselves as autobiographies. Part III focuses on readings of autobiographical works, exploring some examples of their representations of the situation of self-writing, and considering what sort of readings are involved when we interpret a given text as an autobiography. Overall, the book emphasizes the uncertain and contested transactions between Romantic autobiographical writing and the literary public sphere.
John Batchelor (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198182894
- eISBN:
- 9780191673917
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198182894.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Is literary biography so widely read for popular, ‘prurient’ reasons, or for ‘reputable’ intellectual reasons? Is it of interest only in so far as it illuminates a writer's work? How much can we know ...
More
Is literary biography so widely read for popular, ‘prurient’ reasons, or for ‘reputable’ intellectual reasons? Is it of interest only in so far as it illuminates a writer's work? How much can we know about a life, such as Shakespeare's, where the documentation is so scanty? In this revealing new work seventeen leading critics and professional biographers discuss a broad range of issues, including the relationships between biography and autobiography, the problems genre poses, and the literary biographer at work, together with authors, such as Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Huxley, Conrad, and Rochester.Less
Is literary biography so widely read for popular, ‘prurient’ reasons, or for ‘reputable’ intellectual reasons? Is it of interest only in so far as it illuminates a writer's work? How much can we know about a life, such as Shakespeare's, where the documentation is so scanty? In this revealing new work seventeen leading critics and professional biographers discuss a broad range of issues, including the relationships between biography and autobiography, the problems genre poses, and the literary biographer at work, together with authors, such as Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Huxley, Conrad, and Rochester.
Richard S. Lowry
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195102123
- eISBN:
- 9780199855087
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195102123.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
Twain puts in Life on the Mississippi (1883) that writers are “manacled servants of the public.” During the last decade of his life, the intention in making his autobiography was to escape the ...
More
Twain puts in Life on the Mississippi (1883) that writers are “manacled servants of the public.” During the last decade of his life, the intention in making his autobiography was to escape the manacles of his reading audience. In other words, this last work was his final attempt to put down his pen and stop writing. The result was to give its maker complete freedom in composition. Mark Twain wanted to preserve this freedom and guarantee that this was true by allowing his autobiography to be published after his death. He then starts his autobiography addressing the reader that they should keep in mind that he is “speaking from the grave.” He ends his final installment with his account of the Whittier Birthday banquet.Less
Twain puts in Life on the Mississippi (1883) that writers are “manacled servants of the public.” During the last decade of his life, the intention in making his autobiography was to escape the manacles of his reading audience. In other words, this last work was his final attempt to put down his pen and stop writing. The result was to give its maker complete freedom in composition. Mark Twain wanted to preserve this freedom and guarantee that this was true by allowing his autobiography to be published after his death. He then starts his autobiography addressing the reader that they should keep in mind that he is “speaking from the grave.” He ends his final installment with his account of the Whittier Birthday banquet.
Michael Sheringham
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198158431
- eISBN:
- 9780191673306
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198158431.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This book studies French autobiography. Whereas earlier critics have engaged primarily in theoretical discussion of the genre, or in analyses of individual works or authors, this book identifies ...
More
This book studies French autobiography. Whereas earlier critics have engaged primarily in theoretical discussion of the genre, or in analyses of individual works or authors, this book identifies sixteen key autobiographical texts and situates them in the context of an evolving set of challenges and problems. Informed by a sophisticated awareness of recent theoretical debates, the book conceives autobiography as a distinctively open form of writing, perpetually engaged with different forms of ‘otherness’. Manifestations of the Other in the autobiographical process — from the reader, who incarnates other people, to ideology, against which individual truth must be pitted, to the potential otherness of memory itself — are traced through a scrutiny of the ‘devices and desires’ at work in a range of texts from Rousseau's Confessions, to Stendhal's Vie de Henry Brulard and Sartre's Les Mots. Other writers examined include Chateaubriand, Gide, Green, Leiris, Leduc, Gorz, Barthes, Perec, and Sarraute.Less
This book studies French autobiography. Whereas earlier critics have engaged primarily in theoretical discussion of the genre, or in analyses of individual works or authors, this book identifies sixteen key autobiographical texts and situates them in the context of an evolving set of challenges and problems. Informed by a sophisticated awareness of recent theoretical debates, the book conceives autobiography as a distinctively open form of writing, perpetually engaged with different forms of ‘otherness’. Manifestations of the Other in the autobiographical process — from the reader, who incarnates other people, to ideology, against which individual truth must be pitted, to the potential otherness of memory itself — are traced through a scrutiny of the ‘devices and desires’ at work in a range of texts from Rousseau's Confessions, to Stendhal's Vie de Henry Brulard and Sartre's Les Mots. Other writers examined include Chateaubriand, Gide, Green, Leiris, Leduc, Gorz, Barthes, Perec, and Sarraute.
Margaret Atack
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198715153
- eISBN:
- 9780191694929
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198715153.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
The book has discussed the idea that given the current dominance of theories of postmodernity, and the frequency with which its paradigms are used to investigate a wide historical range of material, ...
More
The book has discussed the idea that given the current dominance of theories of postmodernity, and the frequency with which its paradigms are used to investigate a wide historical range of material, it is not a surprise that May 1968 has been analysed with reference to such theories. Gilles Bousquet has also pointed out that for some, the failure of the revolutionary project of May, implicitly drawing on the Enlightenment discourse of change and progress towards ever greatly equality and justice, is in fact a step on the road to postmodern individualism. The book concludes that May is the opposite of a postmodern reading, since the books thematic of subjectivity and autobiography, with its concomitant values of authenticity and immediacy is contrasting with the postmodern. The book also states that May is a dazzling source of reflection on modernity and its metanarratives, including postmodernity, on the relations of the everyday and of history, of contestation and recuperation.Less
The book has discussed the idea that given the current dominance of theories of postmodernity, and the frequency with which its paradigms are used to investigate a wide historical range of material, it is not a surprise that May 1968 has been analysed with reference to such theories. Gilles Bousquet has also pointed out that for some, the failure of the revolutionary project of May, implicitly drawing on the Enlightenment discourse of change and progress towards ever greatly equality and justice, is in fact a step on the road to postmodern individualism. The book concludes that May is the opposite of a postmodern reading, since the books thematic of subjectivity and autobiography, with its concomitant values of authenticity and immediacy is contrasting with the postmodern. The book also states that May is a dazzling source of reflection on modernity and its metanarratives, including postmodernity, on the relations of the everyday and of history, of contestation and recuperation.
Ilaria Serra
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823226788
- eISBN:
- 9780823235032
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823226788.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
The writer Giuseppe Prezzolini said that Italian immigrants left behind tears and sweat but not “words”, making their lives in America mostly in silence, their memories private and ...
More
The writer Giuseppe Prezzolini said that Italian immigrants left behind tears and sweat but not “words”, making their lives in America mostly in silence, their memories private and stories untold. In this innovative portrait of the Italian–American experience, these lives are no longer hidden. The book offers the first comprehensive study of a largely ignored legacy—the autobiographies written by immigrants. It looks closely at fifty-eight representative works written during the high tide of Italian migration. Scouring archives, discovering diaries and memoirs in private houses and forgotten drawers, the book recovers the voices of the first generation—bootblacks and poets, film directors and farmers, miners, anarchists, and seamstresses—compelled to tell their stories. Mostly unpublished, often heavily accented, these tales of ordinary men and women are explored in nuanced detail, organized to reflect how they illuminate the realities of work, survival, identity, and change. Moving between history and literature, the book presents each as the imaginative record of a self in the making and the collective story of the journey to selfhood that is the heart of the immigrant experience.Less
The writer Giuseppe Prezzolini said that Italian immigrants left behind tears and sweat but not “words”, making their lives in America mostly in silence, their memories private and stories untold. In this innovative portrait of the Italian–American experience, these lives are no longer hidden. The book offers the first comprehensive study of a largely ignored legacy—the autobiographies written by immigrants. It looks closely at fifty-eight representative works written during the high tide of Italian migration. Scouring archives, discovering diaries and memoirs in private houses and forgotten drawers, the book recovers the voices of the first generation—bootblacks and poets, film directors and farmers, miners, anarchists, and seamstresses—compelled to tell their stories. Mostly unpublished, often heavily accented, these tales of ordinary men and women are explored in nuanced detail, organized to reflect how they illuminate the realities of work, survival, identity, and change. Moving between history and literature, the book presents each as the imaginative record of a self in the making and the collective story of the journey to selfhood that is the heart of the immigrant experience.
Elleke Boehmer
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719068782
- eISBN:
- 9781781701898
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719068782.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Why is the nation in a post-colonial world so often seen as a motherland? This study explores the relationship between gender icons and foundational fictions of the nation in different post-colonial ...
More
Why is the nation in a post-colonial world so often seen as a motherland? This study explores the relationship between gender icons and foundational fictions of the nation in different post-colonial spaces. The author's work on the intersections between independence, nationalism and gender has already proved canonical in the field. This book combines her keynote essays on the mother figure and the post-colonial nation with new work on male autobiography, ‘daughter’ writers, the colonial body, the trauma of the post-colony and the nation in a transnational context. Focusing on Africa as well as South Asia, and sexuality as well as gender, the author offers close readings of writers ranging from Chinua Achebe, Ben Okri and Nelson Mandela to Arundhati Roy and Yvonne Vera, shaping these into a critical engagement with theorists of the nation such as Fredric Jameson and Partha Chatterjee. Moving beyond cynical deconstructions of the post-colony, the book mounts a reassessment of the post-colonial nation as a site of potential empowerment, as a ‘paradoxical refuge’ in a globalised world. It acts on its own impassioned argument that post-colonial and nation-state studies address substantively issues hitherto raised chiefly within international feminism.Less
Why is the nation in a post-colonial world so often seen as a motherland? This study explores the relationship between gender icons and foundational fictions of the nation in different post-colonial spaces. The author's work on the intersections between independence, nationalism and gender has already proved canonical in the field. This book combines her keynote essays on the mother figure and the post-colonial nation with new work on male autobiography, ‘daughter’ writers, the colonial body, the trauma of the post-colony and the nation in a transnational context. Focusing on Africa as well as South Asia, and sexuality as well as gender, the author offers close readings of writers ranging from Chinua Achebe, Ben Okri and Nelson Mandela to Arundhati Roy and Yvonne Vera, shaping these into a critical engagement with theorists of the nation such as Fredric Jameson and Partha Chatterjee. Moving beyond cynical deconstructions of the post-colony, the book mounts a reassessment of the post-colonial nation as a site of potential empowerment, as a ‘paradoxical refuge’ in a globalised world. It acts on its own impassioned argument that post-colonial and nation-state studies address substantively issues hitherto raised chiefly within international feminism.
Thomas R. Nevin
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195307214
- eISBN:
- 9780199785032
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195307216.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
This chapter focuses on Thérèse's account of herself. Thérèse started her autobiography in January 1895. By that time she had already established herself as a kind of writer in residence at the ...
More
This chapter focuses on Thérèse's account of herself. Thérèse started her autobiography in January 1895. By that time she had already established herself as a kind of writer in residence at the Lisieux Carmel: she had composed fifteen poems for various occasions, such as feast days or the investiture of novices. Some were written on request. She had also composed, in January 1894, the first of two dramas about Jeanne d'Arc. The occasion that prompted her autobiography came casually as she was telling stories about her childhood to her natural sisters. Marie, appreciating Thérèse's narrative gift, with its penchant for mimicry, urged that she write the story of her childhood.Less
This chapter focuses on Thérèse's account of herself. Thérèse started her autobiography in January 1895. By that time she had already established herself as a kind of writer in residence at the Lisieux Carmel: she had composed fifteen poems for various occasions, such as feast days or the investiture of novices. Some were written on request. She had also composed, in January 1894, the first of two dramas about Jeanne d'Arc. The occasion that prompted her autobiography came casually as she was telling stories about her childhood to her natural sisters. Marie, appreciating Thérèse's narrative gift, with its penchant for mimicry, urged that she write the story of her childhood.
Thomas R. Nevin
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195307214
- eISBN:
- 9780199785032
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195307216.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
This chapter focuses on Thérèse's plays and poetry. Thérèse's prayers and poems, the letters, the autobiography foremost — all have been translated and long circulated. However, her plays or ...
More
This chapter focuses on Thérèse's plays and poetry. Thérèse's prayers and poems, the letters, the autobiography foremost — all have been translated and long circulated. However, her plays or récréations pieuses as they were known within Carmel, have been neglected. It is a strange and unhelpful neglect; unhelpful, because the plays open to us, no less than do the poems, valuable windows onto Thérèse's spirituality; strange, because in them we have a concrete and lively idea of the communal physics of Carmel and how its sisters — its prisoners, Thérèse might have said — lifted themselves from routine through an inspired, if generally mediocre pen. On those feast days, they relaxed, they enjoyed, they learned, they even laughed.Less
This chapter focuses on Thérèse's plays and poetry. Thérèse's prayers and poems, the letters, the autobiography foremost — all have been translated and long circulated. However, her plays or récréations pieuses as they were known within Carmel, have been neglected. It is a strange and unhelpful neglect; unhelpful, because the plays open to us, no less than do the poems, valuable windows onto Thérèse's spirituality; strange, because in them we have a concrete and lively idea of the communal physics of Carmel and how its sisters — its prisoners, Thérèse might have said — lifted themselves from routine through an inspired, if generally mediocre pen. On those feast days, they relaxed, they enjoyed, they learned, they even laughed.
Ilaria Serra
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823226788
- eISBN:
- 9780823235032
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823226788.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This book is proof of the reversal of Giuseppe Prezzolini's 1963 conclusions about Italian immigrant autobiography and his claim that the immigrants did not want to remember ...
More
This book is proof of the reversal of Giuseppe Prezzolini's 1963 conclusions about Italian immigrant autobiography and his claim that the immigrants did not want to remember their past and that they left no written word. This book is full of evidence of how ardently these people wanted their memories preserved. Italian American autobiographical material has existed all along, but its study was hampered by the fact that it did not match the heroic claims of greatness that fit with the mid-twentieth-century view of what was worthy material for an autobiography. This group of some sixty Italian Americans who tell their stories here experienced universal struggles shared by everyone, and suffered immigration traumas comparable to those that many ethnic immigrant groups have faced. In this way one can see many universal truths in these examples. These stories of Italian American lives offer local color and cultural detail that isn't provided by immigration statistics, something even more vivid and illustrative than photographs of immigrants.Less
This book is proof of the reversal of Giuseppe Prezzolini's 1963 conclusions about Italian immigrant autobiography and his claim that the immigrants did not want to remember their past and that they left no written word. This book is full of evidence of how ardently these people wanted their memories preserved. Italian American autobiographical material has existed all along, but its study was hampered by the fact that it did not match the heroic claims of greatness that fit with the mid-twentieth-century view of what was worthy material for an autobiography. This group of some sixty Italian Americans who tell their stories here experienced universal struggles shared by everyone, and suffered immigration traumas comparable to those that many ethnic immigrant groups have faced. In this way one can see many universal truths in these examples. These stories of Italian American lives offer local color and cultural detail that isn't provided by immigration statistics, something even more vivid and illustrative than photographs of immigrants.
Max Saunders
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199579761
- eISBN:
- 9780191722882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579761.003.0014
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This conclusion argues that auto/biography is shadowed by the alter ego of scepticism, whether directed at the reality or intelligibility of selves; their representability; or the adequacy of the ...
More
This conclusion argues that auto/biography is shadowed by the alter ego of scepticism, whether directed at the reality or intelligibility of selves; their representability; or the adequacy of the available forms of representation. It summarizes the resulting positions of anti‐subjectivity and autobiograficton, arguing that the sceptical engagements with life‐writing display a markedly performative dimension, using theoretical concepts from Judith Butler and Sidonie Smith. The notion of the performative reintroduces the ideas of fictionality and creativity to the heart of the autobiographic project; and to that extent could be said to inscribe even in formal autobiography some of the key qualities discovered here in more hybrid works, of ‘autobiografiction’ and imaginary writing. A literary autobiography's relation to a fictional oeuvre is discussed as working according to Derrida's logic of the supplement, with a comparable effect: posing autobiography as outside fiction, but infiltrating the autobiographical into the fiction, and thus reciprocally, the fictional into the autobiography. What such arguments bring out is how autobiography and fiction, while posed as mutually exclusive, are in fact profoundly interdependent, and constitute throughout the last two centuries a system of modern self‐representation which might itself be termed ‘autobiografiction’.Less
This conclusion argues that auto/biography is shadowed by the alter ego of scepticism, whether directed at the reality or intelligibility of selves; their representability; or the adequacy of the available forms of representation. It summarizes the resulting positions of anti‐subjectivity and autobiograficton, arguing that the sceptical engagements with life‐writing display a markedly performative dimension, using theoretical concepts from Judith Butler and Sidonie Smith. The notion of the performative reintroduces the ideas of fictionality and creativity to the heart of the autobiographic project; and to that extent could be said to inscribe even in formal autobiography some of the key qualities discovered here in more hybrid works, of ‘autobiografiction’ and imaginary writing. A literary autobiography's relation to a fictional oeuvre is discussed as working according to Derrida's logic of the supplement, with a comparable effect: posing autobiography as outside fiction, but infiltrating the autobiographical into the fiction, and thus reciprocally, the fictional into the autobiography. What such arguments bring out is how autobiography and fiction, while posed as mutually exclusive, are in fact profoundly interdependent, and constitute throughout the last two centuries a system of modern self‐representation which might itself be termed ‘autobiografiction’.
Max Saunders
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199579761
- eISBN:
- 9780191722882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579761.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter discusses the taxonomy of imaginary literary works (supplementing the taxonomy of fictionalized life‐writings proposed in Chapter 5), and their scarcity during the nineteenth century. It ...
More
This chapter discusses the taxonomy of imaginary literary works (supplementing the taxonomy of fictionalized life‐writings proposed in Chapter 5), and their scarcity during the nineteenth century. It concludes the discussion of Joyce, and ends with an account of Stein's Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas as an indisputable example of a fictionally authored auto/biography.Less
This chapter discusses the taxonomy of imaginary literary works (supplementing the taxonomy of fictionalized life‐writings proposed in Chapter 5), and their scarcity during the nineteenth century. It concludes the discussion of Joyce, and ends with an account of Stein's Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas as an indisputable example of a fictionally authored auto/biography.
Max Saunders
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199579761
- eISBN:
- 9780191722882
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579761.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This book explores how writers from the 1870s to the 1930s experimented with forms of life‐writing — biography, autobiography, memoir, diary, journal — increasingly for the purposes of fiction. It ...
More
This book explores how writers from the 1870s to the 1930s experimented with forms of life‐writing — biography, autobiography, memoir, diary, journal — increasingly for the purposes of fiction. It argues for an upsurge in new hybrid forms — identified in a surprisingly early essay of 1906 (which provides a key term) as ‘autobiografiction’. Examples include ‘Mark Rutherford’, Gissing, Samuel Butler, Gosse, and A. C. Benson. The book offers a taxonomy of their extraordinary variety, showing how they arose as the pressures of secularization and psychological theory disturbed the categories of biography and autobiography. It argues that a group of concepts, forms, and tropes regularly co‐exist: portraiture, imaginary portraits, collections of such portraits; and (because they are often of imaginary artists) imaginary works of art and literature. Autobiografiction also sheds strong light on modernism. Modernism is often characterized as a movement of ‘impersonality' — a rejection of auto/biography — but most of its major works engage in profound ways with questions of life‐writing. The second part looks at writers experimenting further with autobiografiction as impressionism turns into modernism, and consists of detailed readings of Joyce, Stein, Pound, Woolf, and others, and juxtaposing their work with contemporaries whose experiments with life‐writing forms are no less striking. It argues that connecting modernist games with auto/biography and the ‘New Biography’ with their turn‐of‐the‐century precursors allows them to be understood in a new way. A coda considers the after‐life of these experiments in postmodern fiction. A conclusion considers the theoretical implications developed throughout, and argues that ‘autobiografiction’ can also shed light on under‐theorized questions such as what we mean by ‘autobiographical’ and the relations between autobiography and fiction.Less
This book explores how writers from the 1870s to the 1930s experimented with forms of life‐writing — biography, autobiography, memoir, diary, journal — increasingly for the purposes of fiction. It argues for an upsurge in new hybrid forms — identified in a surprisingly early essay of 1906 (which provides a key term) as ‘autobiografiction’. Examples include ‘Mark Rutherford’, Gissing, Samuel Butler, Gosse, and A. C. Benson. The book offers a taxonomy of their extraordinary variety, showing how they arose as the pressures of secularization and psychological theory disturbed the categories of biography and autobiography. It argues that a group of concepts, forms, and tropes regularly co‐exist: portraiture, imaginary portraits, collections of such portraits; and (because they are often of imaginary artists) imaginary works of art and literature. Autobiografiction also sheds strong light on modernism. Modernism is often characterized as a movement of ‘impersonality' — a rejection of auto/biography — but most of its major works engage in profound ways with questions of life‐writing. The second part looks at writers experimenting further with autobiografiction as impressionism turns into modernism, and consists of detailed readings of Joyce, Stein, Pound, Woolf, and others, and juxtaposing their work with contemporaries whose experiments with life‐writing forms are no less striking. It argues that connecting modernist games with auto/biography and the ‘New Biography’ with their turn‐of‐the‐century precursors allows them to be understood in a new way. A coda considers the after‐life of these experiments in postmodern fiction. A conclusion considers the theoretical implications developed throughout, and argues that ‘autobiografiction’ can also shed light on under‐theorized questions such as what we mean by ‘autobiographical’ and the relations between autobiography and fiction.
P. F. Strawson
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199587292
- eISBN:
- 9780191728747
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199587292.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This book presents in chapter format twenty-two uncollected philosophical essays by Sir Peter Strawson, one of the leading philosophers of the second half of the 20th century. The chapters (two of ...
More
This book presents in chapter format twenty-two uncollected philosophical essays by Sir Peter Strawson, one of the leading philosophers of the second half of the 20th century. The chapters (two of them previously unpublished essays) are drawn from seven decades of work, from 1949 to 2003. They span the broad range of Strawson's work: metaphysics, epistemology, philosophical logic, philosophy of language, ethical theory, and history of philosophy, along with metaphilosophical reflections and intellectual autobiography.Less
This book presents in chapter format twenty-two uncollected philosophical essays by Sir Peter Strawson, one of the leading philosophers of the second half of the 20th century. The chapters (two of them previously unpublished essays) are drawn from seven decades of work, from 1949 to 2003. They span the broad range of Strawson's work: metaphysics, epistemology, philosophical logic, philosophy of language, ethical theory, and history of philosophy, along with metaphilosophical reflections and intellectual autobiography.
Max Saunders
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199579761
- eISBN:
- 9780191722882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579761.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This is the first of four chapters exploring the turn‐of‐the‐century disturbances in the relation between life‐writing and fiction. It argues that ‘autobiography’ begins to seem a problematic ...
More
This is the first of four chapters exploring the turn‐of‐the‐century disturbances in the relation between life‐writing and fiction. It argues that ‘autobiography’ begins to seem a problematic category in the period, and gets displaced towards fiction. The chapter focuses on ‘Mark Rutherford’, not just for his autobiography, but for his later inclusion of the story ‘A Mysterious Portrait’. The concept of the heteronym is introduced, to be developed in Chapters 7 and Chapter 8. Other authors discussed here include George Gissing (The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft), H. G. Wells (Boon), Henry Adams, Samuel Butler (The Way of All Flesh), and Edmund Gosse (Father and Son). The various displacements of auto/biography are shown to complicate Lejeune's concept of the autobiographic contract guaranteeing the identity of author, narrator, and subject.Less
This is the first of four chapters exploring the turn‐of‐the‐century disturbances in the relation between life‐writing and fiction. It argues that ‘autobiography’ begins to seem a problematic category in the period, and gets displaced towards fiction. The chapter focuses on ‘Mark Rutherford’, not just for his autobiography, but for his later inclusion of the story ‘A Mysterious Portrait’. The concept of the heteronym is introduced, to be developed in Chapters 7 and Chapter 8. Other authors discussed here include George Gissing (The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft), H. G. Wells (Boon), Henry Adams, Samuel Butler (The Way of All Flesh), and Edmund Gosse (Father and Son). The various displacements of auto/biography are shown to complicate Lejeune's concept of the autobiographic contract guaranteeing the identity of author, narrator, and subject.
James Treadwell
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199262977
- eISBN:
- 9780191718724
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199262977.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter explores how the theme of the ‘self’ as an autonomous and expressive agent — the ‘Romantic’ self — is produced in texts. A case study of sets of works by Elizabeth Gooch and William ...
More
This chapter explores how the theme of the ‘self’ as an autonomous and expressive agent — the ‘Romantic’ self — is produced in texts. A case study of sets of works by Elizabeth Gooch and William Henry Ireland demonstrates that autobiography invokes a self which resists or transcends the transactions in which it is enmeshed. In courtesan autobiographies and slave autobiographies, the rhetorical effects of expressive subjectivity are also set in opposition to the transactions that determine the self and its text. This idea is developed in readings of two of the master-texts of ‘Romantic’ subjectivity, De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and Hazlitt's Liber Amoris.Less
This chapter explores how the theme of the ‘self’ as an autonomous and expressive agent — the ‘Romantic’ self — is produced in texts. A case study of sets of works by Elizabeth Gooch and William Henry Ireland demonstrates that autobiography invokes a self which resists or transcends the transactions in which it is enmeshed. In courtesan autobiographies and slave autobiographies, the rhetorical effects of expressive subjectivity are also set in opposition to the transactions that determine the self and its text. This idea is developed in readings of two of the master-texts of ‘Romantic’ subjectivity, De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and Hazlitt's Liber Amoris.
Martin Ceadel
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199571161
- eISBN:
- 9780191721762
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199571161.003.0009
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory, International Relations and Politics
This chapter examines Angell as an unofficial propagandist first for Britain's cause in the Second World War and then for the west's cause in the Cold War. Moving to the United States in July 1940, ...
More
This chapter examines Angell as an unofficial propagandist first for Britain's cause in the Second World War and then for the west's cause in the Cold War. Moving to the United States in July 1940, he produced a best-selling statement of allied war aims in early 1943, and lambasted ‘the Communist-cum-atomic pestilence’ from 1945 onwards. His return to Britain in 1951 coincided with the appearance of a successful autobiography; and seven years later he produced another book, though he made little progress with the educational testament on which he toiled to the end. Anxious about his legacy, he was gratified by increasing historical interest in his career and by the purchase of his books and papers by an American college. He remained active and independent until a few months before his death aged almost 95.Less
This chapter examines Angell as an unofficial propagandist first for Britain's cause in the Second World War and then for the west's cause in the Cold War. Moving to the United States in July 1940, he produced a best-selling statement of allied war aims in early 1943, and lambasted ‘the Communist-cum-atomic pestilence’ from 1945 onwards. His return to Britain in 1951 coincided with the appearance of a successful autobiography; and seven years later he produced another book, though he made little progress with the educational testament on which he toiled to the end. Anxious about his legacy, he was gratified by increasing historical interest in his career and by the purchase of his books and papers by an American college. He remained active and independent until a few months before his death aged almost 95.
