The function of autobiography in contributing new literary voices, new historical perspectives, and new cultural awareness cannot be underestimated. In this survey of the genre, Professor James Goodwin establishes the importance of autobiography to both literature and social history while undertaking careful examinations of several significant words in the field. His close readings focus on works from the United States and France, two nations whose political revolutions greatly shaped modern autobiography. In a comprehensive overview chapter, Professor Goodwin examines the genre's characteristics and the scope of its complex history, charting important contributions of philosophy, psychology, and the social sciences along the way. The chapters that follow discuss the process of self-inquiry by Benjamin Franklin, Frederick Douglass, Gertrude Stein, Michel de Montaigne, and Jean-Paul Sartre, among others. In these original, in-depth analyses, Goodwin evaluates such diverse topics as the American success paradigm, the relationship between literacy and liberation in African-American society, the use of the third person in autobiography, and the importance of the genre in the emergence of cultures and social groups traditionally confined to minority status. Finally, the comprehensive bibliographic essay surveys recent criticism and theory on the genre, presenting approaches ranging from literary history to gender issues and concepts of subjectivity.
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