Autobiographies, Diaries and Journals

Reading Journal - Session 2 - 25/10/2016

1.       Autobiography: General Survey

·         generally: self-produced non-fiction text that tells the writer’s life story

·         four additional features:

o   psychological and philosophical dimension: balance active public and contemplative private one

o   awareness of audience: window into thoughts, motives, reactions

o   formal conventions:hero-narrative, metaphors, bridges, ...

o   didactic intent

·         first full-length example: Augustine – Confessions, 397-400

·         autobiographers focus on themselves as individuals since the 16^th century in Enlightenment Europe

·         change from exemplum to singular individual marks the defining moment in the history of the autobiography (Weintraub in The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography)

o   too simplified, better: unique capacity for registering changing cultural conceptions of the self

o   adapting content of own stories with cultural ideals

·         formal evolution

o   1^st phase: historical autobiography – chronologically structured narratives

o   2^nd phase: philosophical autobiography (Romanticism)

o   3^rd phase: autobiographical novel, multiple autobiography (20^th century)

·         largely Western genre

Autobiographical Essay

·         short autobiography, character of essay

·         intersection between both, narratively self-centered imperatives and worldly discursiveness

Autobiography and Poetry

·         often regarded as autobiographical, but mostly fictionalized, lyrical I not necessarily autobiographical I

·         only entitled to make an autobiographical connection if the poet makes this explicitly clear

Autoethnography

·         employed in recent postcolonial, multicultural, anthropological and folkloric theorizing for hybrid texts that combine autobiographical and ethnographic writing practices

·         double history and critical theory in anthropology and the social sciences since the 1980s and as textual practice in writing and the visual arts throughout the 20^th century

·         at the boundary of three genres: native anthropology, ethnic autobiography, autobiographical ethnography

·         through boundary crossing, it rewrites the self and the social through each other

Bildungsroman

·         novel of formation

·         story of youth, search for kindred souls, dealing with hardships and maturing over the course of the story, finding oneself and becoming aware of ones purpose in the world

·         German term because of origins but also inability to find a suitable translation

·         principle characteristics outlines by Jerome Buckley

o   (male) child grows up in the provinces

o   suffers constraints on his intellectual and imaginative development

o   clashes with his father and leaves home, usually heading for a large city

o   at least two love affairs, one debasing, one exalting

o   all experiences compel him to re-examine his values and attain a measure of maturity and understanding of the world

·         tension because of contradictory demands on the protagonist to develop fully his individuality and to harmonize his development with the goals of the greater community

o   symbolic form of modernity, contradiction reflects nature of modern culture

·         Black Bildungsroman is often rejecting the possibility of attaining harmony with the existing social order, but instead shows the destructive impact of society on the individual

Biographical Dictionaries

·         first emerged in the 10^th cent. among the Arabs

·         due to emergence of (collective) identity

·         15^th-17^th cent: biographical history focused on “worthies” like Christian martyrs and saints

·         entries tend to be brief, non-narrative, not organized historically or chronologically, but directed by motives of compilation towards a combination of inclusivity and brevity

·         later alphabetical to equalize them, equally worthy

·         through inclusion and exclusion highly selective

2.       Diaries and Journals: General Survey

·         diary: hybridity and diversity

o   intimate confessional, family album, collection of historical events ...

·         artless presentation of the self

·         colloquial language, sense of immediacy

·         attempt to master experience and contain the self as a closed book

·         both forward planner and retrospective chronicle

·         communication that is not to be communicated

·         generally regarded as a feminine genre