Autobiography

by Anderson; Linda

• ISBN13: 9780415186353
• ISBN10: 0415186358
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-04-30
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This addition to the acclaimed New Critical Idiom series offers a wide-ranging introduction to the study of autobiography and a historical overview of autobiographical writing from St Augustine to the present day.Autobiography follows the important developments in autobiographical criticism in the last thirty years, paying particular attention to psychoanalytic, poststructualist and feminist approaches. Autobiography :* outlines the main theoretical issues and concepts of this area* looks at the different forms from confessions to narratives to memoirs to diaries* considers the major writers of this tradition* looks at the ideological assumptions about the nature of the self.

Author Biography

Linda Anderson is Professor of Modern English and American Literature at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

Table of Contents

Series Editor's Preface	ix
Acknowledgements	xi
Introduction	1	(1)
Authors and Subjects	1	(6)
The Law of Genre	7	(5)
Poststructuralist Interventions	12	(6)
Historians of the Self	18	(42)
Saint Augustine's Confessions	18	(9)
Non-conforming Selves: John Bunyan's Grace Abounding	27	(6)
Serial Selves: James Boswell and Hester Thrale	33	(10)
Sublime Egos: Rousseaus and Wordsworth	43	(17)
Subjectivity, Representation and Narrative	60	(32)
Freud's Unconscious	60	(10)
Barthes' Autobiographical Signs	70	(9)
Derrida and the Traces of Autobiography	79	(7)
Feminism and Poststructuralism	86	(6)
Other Subjects	92	(29)
Gender, Modernism and Autobiography	92	(10)
Locating Difference	102	(8)
Landscape for a Good Woman	110	(4)
Postcolonial Subjects	114	(7)
Practising Autobiography	121	(13)
Personal Criticism	121	(5)
Testimonies	126	(8)
Glossary	134	(8)
Bibliography	142	(8)
Index	150