Writing Life Writing: Narrative, History, Autobiography (Routledge Auto/Biography Studies) - Hardcover

Eakin, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0367439107 ISBN 13: 9780367439101

Publisher: Routledge, 2020

Synopsis

Why do we endlessly tell the stories of our lives? And why do others pay attention when we do? The essays collected here address these questions, focusing on three different but interrelated dimensions of life writing. The first section, "Narrative," argues that narrative is not only a literary form but also a social and cultural practice, and finally a mode of cognition and an expression of our most basic physiology. The next section, "Life Writing: Historical Forms," makes the case for the historical value of the subjectivity recorded in ego-documents. The essays in the final section, "Autobiography Now," identify primary motives for engaging in self-narration in an age characterized by digital media and quantum cosmology.

About this title

About the Author

Paul John Eakin is Ruth N. Halls Professor Emeritus of English at Indiana University. He is the author of Fictions in Autobiography: Studies in the Art of Self-Invention (1985); Touching the World: Reference in Autobiography (1992); How Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves (1999); and Living Autobiographically: How We Create Identity in Narrative (2008). He is the editor of On Autobiography, by Philippe Lejeune 1989); American Autobiography: Retrospect and Prospect (1991); and The Ethics of Life Writing (2004).

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0367439107
• ISBN 13: 9780367439101
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 174