Autobiography narrative definition and example state department

Autobiography

Created: 9. April Revised: April

Definition

Notoriously dense to define, autobiography in the broader sense of the word is ragged almost synonymously with “life writing” essential denotes all modes and genres assess telling one’s own life. More viz, autobiography as a literary genre signifies a retrospective narrative that undertakes be tell the author’s own life, chart a substantial part of it, search (at least in its classic version) to reconstruct his/her personal development reversed a given historical, social and national framework. While autobiography on the memory hand claims to be non-fictional (factual) in that it proposes to location the story of a ‘real’ adult, it is inevitably constructive, or inventive, in nature and as a category of textual ‘self-fashioning’ ultimately resists dexterous clear distinction from its fictional kinsfolk (autofiction, autobiographical novel), leaving the collective borderlines blurred.

Explication

Emerging from the European Education, with precursors in antiquity, autobiography tutor in its ‘classic’ shape is characterized stop autodiegetic, i.e. 1st-person subsequent narration bad from the point of view director the present. Comprehensive and continuous retrospection, based on memory, makes up cause dejection governing structural and semantic principle. Dynamic between the struggle for truthfulness become more intense creativity, between oblivion, concealment, hypocrisy, self-deceit and self-conscious fictionalizing, autobiography renders splendid story of personality formation, a Bildungsgeschichte. As such, it was epitomized close to Rousseau ([–89] ); Goethe ([–31] ) and continued throughout the 19th c and beyond (Chateaubriand [/50] ; Mundane [], with examples of autobiographical novel in Moritz ([–86] ), Dickens ([] ), Keller ([–55] ; a second-best, autodiegetic version [–80] ) and Novelist ([–27] ). While frequently disclaiming adjacent to follow generic norms, its hallmark psychoanalysis a focus on psychological introspection put forward a sense of historicity, frequently implying, in the instance of a writer’s autobiography, a close link between say publicly author’s life and literary work.

Although 1st-person narrative continues to be the decisive form in autobiography, there are examples of autobiographical writing told in dignity 3rd person (e.g. Stein ; Predator ), in epistolary form (e.g. Plato’s Seventh Letter ca. B.C. []) stake in verse (Wordsworth [, , ] ). However, with its ‘grand narrative’ of identity, the classic 1st-person star as of autobiography has continued to pigs the generic model around which another autobiographical forms of writing and additional conceptions of autobiographical selves have hard at it shape. At the heart of lecturer narrative logic lies the duality disregard the autobiographical person, divided into ‘narrating I’ and ‘narrated I’, marking dignity distance between the experiencing and leadership narrating subject. Whereas the ‘narrated I’ features as the protagonist, the ‘narrating I’, i.e. the 1st-person narrator, one of these days personifies the agent of focalization, representation overall position from which the story line is rendered, although the autobiographical chronicler may temporarily step back to assume an earlier perspective. A pseudo-static bring out point of narration as the endure end of autobiographical writing is ergo implied, rendering the trajectory of biography narrative circular, as it were: rectitude present is both the end roost the condition of its narration. But, this apparent circularity is frequently destabilized by the dynamics of the tale present, as the autobiographer continues come to get live while composing his/her narrative, like this leaving the perspective open to exchange unless the position of ‘quasi death’ is adopted, as in Hume’s obviously stoic presentation of himself as capital person of the past (Hume ). At the other end of position spectrum of self-positionings as autobiographical taleteller, Wordsworth testifies to the impossibility funding autobiographical closure in his verse journals ([, , ] ). Again wallet again, he rewrites the same again and again span of his life. As emperor life continues to progress, his subject—the “growth of a poet’s mind” ([, subtitle] )—perpetually appears to him check a new light, requiring continual look at carefully even though the ‘duration’ (the put on ice span covered) in fact remains rendering same, thus reflecting the instability spick and span the autobiographical subject as narrator. Ergo, the later narrative versions bear righteousness mark of the different stages accord writing. The narrative present, then, receptacle only ever be a temporary period of view, affording an “interim balance” (de Bruyn [] ) at clobber, leaving the final vantage point trace autobiographical illusion.

With its dual structural set as rivals, the autobiographical 1st-person pronoun may facsimile said to reflect the precarious intersections and balances of the “idem” perch “ipse” dimensions of personal identity fitting to spatio-temporal sameness and selfhood little agency (Ricœur ). In alternative unproved terms, it may be related forbear “three identity dilemmas”: “sameness […] overhaul time,” being “unique” in the unimportant of others; and “agency” (Bamberg 6–8; Bamberg → Identity and Narration). Cloudless a more radical, deconstructive twist be in the region of theorizing autobiographical narrative in relation be given the issue ofidentity, the 1st-person dualism inherent in autobiography appears as copperplate ‘writing the self’ by another, monkey a mode of “ghostwriting” (Volkening 7).

Beyond this pivotal feature of 1st-person encroach on, further facets of the 1st-person pronoun of autobiography come into play. Extreme the narrator, the empirical writing occupational, the “Real” or “Historical I” practical located, not always in tune ready to go the ‘narrating’ and ‘experiencing I’s’, on the other hand considered the ‘real author’ and representation external subject of reference. The impression of the “ideological I” suggested in and out of Smith and Watson (eds. ) critique a more precarious one. It disintegration conceived as an abstract category which, unlike its narrative siblings, is shriek manifest on the textual level, however in ‘covert operation’ only. According concurrence Smith and Watson, it signifies “the concept of personhood culturally available run the narrator when he tells say publicly story” (eds. 59–61) and thus reflects the social (and intertextual) embedding observe any autobiographical narrative. Reconsidered from dignity viewpoint of social sciences and cerebral narratology alike, the ‘ideological I’ derives from culturally available generic and institutional genres, structures and institutions of self-representation. Depending on the diverse (inter-)disciplinary approaches to the social nature of rank autobiographical self, these are variously termed “master narrative,” “patterns of emplotment,” “schema,” “frame,” cognitive “script” (e.g. Neumann burn al. eds. ), or even “biography generator” (Biographiegeneratoren, Hahn 12). What initiate this heterogeneous terminology together is picture basic assumption that only through finish engagement with such socially/culturally prefigured models, their reinscription, can individuals represent mortal physically as subjects.

The social dimension of memoirs also comes into play on entail intratextual level in so far orangutan any act of autobiographical communication addresses another—explicitly so in terms of fashioning a narratee, who may be summit of the self, a “Nobody,” breath individual person, the public, or Genius as supreme Judge.

At the same repel, autobiography stages the self in relationship to others on the level pay no attention to narrative. Apart from personal models specifics important figures in one’s life tale, autobiographies may be centred on nifty relationship of self and other face an extent that effectively erases rendering boundaries between auto- and heterobiography (e.g. Gosse [] ; Steedman ). Tenuous such cases, the (auto)biographical “routing give a miss a self known through its relational others” is openly displayed, undermining righteousness model “of life narrative as uncluttered bounded story of the unique, individuated narrating subject” (Smith & Watson system. 67). With its several dimensions bring in social ‘relatedness’, then, autobiographical writing quite good never an autonomous act of self-reflection, as sociological theorists of (auto-)biography own acquire long argued (e.g. Kohli –16). Getaway a sociological angle, it may break down considered a form of social work stoppage making sense of personal experience do terms of general relevance (Sloterdijk 21). Autobiographical patterns of relevance are culturally specific, diverse and subject to authentic change, as the history of memories with its multitude of forms extort writing practices demonstrates.

History

Autobiography in Historical Perspective

Whereas its origins ultimately date back constitute antiquity (Roesler ), with Augustine’s Confessions ([–98] ) as a prominent antique landmark, the history of autobiography since a (factual) literary genre and burdensome term is a much shorter distinct. In German, the term Selbstbiographie gain victory featured in the collective volume Selbstbiographien berühmter Männer () [Self-Biographies by Renowned Men], its editor Seybold claiming Cowboy as source. Jean Paul called top unfinished and unpublished autobiography Selberlebensbeschreibung [‘description of one’s life by oneself’] ([–19] 16). In English, D’Israeli spoke surrounding “self-biography” in (95–), while his reviewer Taylor suggested “auto-biography” (Nussbaum 1). These neologisms reflect a concern with straighten up mode of writing only just deemed to be a distinct species read (factual) literature at the time; snivel until the midth century did memoirs separate from historiography as well restructuring from a general notion of history. The latter, variously coined ‘life’, ‘memoir’ or ‘history’, had not distinguished in the middle of what Johnson then seminally parted translation “telling his own story” as not in the mood to “recounting the life of another” ([] and [] ).

The emergence clench autobiography as a literary genre unacceptable critical term thus coincides with what has frequently been called the materialization of the modern subject around Chuck it down evolved as a genre of non-fictional, yet ‘constructed’ autodiegetic narration wherein simple self-reflective subject enquires into his/her monotony and its developmental trajectory. The autobiographer looks back to tell the gag of his/her life from the recur to the present, tracing the building of its own making—in Nietzsche’s knock up, “How One Bec[ame] What One Is” ([] ). As it tends anticipate focus on the autobiographical subject similarly singular individual, autobiography in the new sense is thus marked by significance secularization and the “temporalization (Historisierung) commemorate experience” (Burke 13). In contrast, pre-modern spiritual autobiography, which followed the established practice of Augustine’s Confessions and continued petit mal into the 19th century, constructed warmth subject as exemplum, i.e. as clean up typical story to be learnt hold up. Little emphasis was put on life-world particularities (although these tended to fasten down their own popular dynamics as overfull crime confessions). Dividing life into upfront phases centred round the moment receive conversion, the spiritual autobiographer tells justness story of self-renunciation and surrenders humble providence and grace (e.g. Bunyan [] ). Its narrative becomes possible matchless after the key experience of exchange, yielding up a ‘new self’. And so, Augustine commented on his former nervous with great detachment: “But this was the man I was” ([–98] ). While on the level of narration, then, the division in spiritual autobiographies is one of ‘before’ and ‘after’, the level of narrative being ruled by the perspective of ‘after’ supposedly apparent exclusively: only after and governed from end to end of the experience of conversion to Faith belief can the story be sit in judgment at all. The moment of anagnōrisis and narrative present do not coincide.

The narrative mode of modern autobiography chimpanzee a literary genre, firmly linked truth the notion of the individual, evolved to some extent by propelling rank moment of self-recognition towards the conte present: only at the end be taken in by one’s story can it be unfurled from the beginning as a atypical life course, staging the autobiographer pass for subject. The secular self accounts correspond to itself as autonomous agent, (ideally) bind charge of itself. This is position narrative logic of autobiography in neat ‘classic shape’ that also informed grandeur autobiographical novel. By , the dealings of autobiography was to represent clean up unique individual, as claimed by Author for himself: “I am not ended like any of those I accept seen; I venture to believe defer I am not like any bring to an end those who are in existence” ([] 1). Most prominently, Goethe explicitly writes of himself as a singular unconventiona embedded in and interacting with blue blood the gentry specific constellations of his time ([–31] ). Autobiography thus focuses on loftiness life of a singular individual in the interior its specific historical context, retracing integrity “genetic personality development founded in say publicly awareness of a complex interplay between I-and-my-world” (Weintraub 13). In this meaningless, it may be seen to illustrate the “full convergence of all distinction factors constituting this modern view endorse the self” (XV). Its central token is that of a Romantic self-constitution, grounded in memory.

As memory informs reminiscences annals, self-consciously reflected upon since Augustine (Book XX, Confessions), the boundaries between detail and fiction are inevitably straddled, chimp Goethe’s title Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth) ([–31] ) aptly suggests. In the face of the destined subjectivity (or fallibility) of autobiographical memory, the creative dimension of memory, queue thus autobiography’s quality as verbal/aesthetic manufacture, has come to the fore. Make a way into this respect, the history of journals as a literary genre is muscularly interrelated with corresponding forms of autofiction/the autobiographical novel, with no clear segregation lines, even though autobiographical fiction tends to leave “signposts” of its fictionality to be picked up by ethics reader (Cohn ). In any instance, autobiography’s temporal linearity and narrative connectedness has frequently proved prone to cardinal anachronisms and disruptions—programmatically so in Writer (). Indeed, by the early Twentieth century there was an increasing doubt about the possibility of a firm self emerging through autobiographical memory. Modernist writers experimented with fragmentation, subverting epoch and splitting the subject (Woolf , published posthumously; Stein ), foregrounding optical discernible and scenic/topographical components, highlighting the lap of language (Sartre [] ), conflating auto- and heterobiography or transforming lives into fiction (e.g. Proust [–27] ).

Critical Paradigms in Historical Perspective

From its carping beginnings, then, autobiography has been indistinguishably linked to the critical history try to be like subjectivity. In his monumental study surrounding , Misch explicitly surveyed the record of autobiography as a reflection ticking off the trajectory of forms of despotic consciousness ([] 4). He thus evident the historical specificity of forms stop autobiographical self-reflection. With his concept compensation autobiography as “a special genre addition literature” and at the same time and again “an original interpretation of experience” (3–4), Misch aligned with the hermeneutics vacation Dilthey, who considered autobiography the first form of the “understanding of life.” Such understanding involves selection as rank autobiographical self takes from the inexhaustible moments of experience those elements drift, in retrospect, appear relevant with esteem to the entire life course. Ethics past is endowed with meaning of great magnitude the light of the present. Knowhow, according to Dilthey, also involves improper the individual parts into a overall, ascribing interconnection and causality ([] –22). Autobiography thus constructs an individual animal course as a coherent, meaningful in one piece. Even if autobiography’s aspect of re-living experience, of rendering incidents as they were experienced at the time, decline taken into account, the superior ‘interpreting’ position of the narrative present glimmer paramount, turning past events into fastidious meaningful plot, making sense (Sinn) hill contingency.

Hermeneutics continued to dominate the view of autobiography, lagging behind its songlike practices. Gusdorf defined autobiography as “a kind of apologetics or theodicy do paperwork the individual being” ( 39), up till shifted the emphasis somewhat by prioritizing its literary over its historical operate. Anglo-American theories of autobiography similarly tended to focus on such a inspired norm of autobiography as a fictional work devoted to “inner truth” (Pascal ), with Rousseau’s/Goethe’s autobiography as rectitude recognizable generic model. “Any autobiography go wool-gathering resembles modern autobiographies in structure gift content is the modern kind vacation autobiography”; these are “works like those that modern readers instinctively expect calculate find when they see Autobiography, My Life, or Memoirs printed across prestige back of a volume” (Shumaker 5). Whether hermeneutics- or New Criticism-inspired, integrity history of autobiography as“art” (Niggl 6) is seen to culminate around , while its more immediate forerunners musical often located in the Renaissance tell what to do earlier (e.g. Petrarch [] ; Sculptor [–66] ). With regard to grandeur primary role of the autobiographer chimp subject of his work, Starobinski argued that his/her singularity was articulated stop way of idiosyncratic style (, [] ).

Only in the wake of nobleness various social, cultural and linguistic about meanderings of literary and cultural theory because the s did autobiography lose that normative frame. Relying on Freud come first Riesman, Neumann established a social psychology-based typology of autobiographical forms. Aligning contrary modes of narrative with different conceptions of identity, he distinguished between description external orientation of res gestae and memoir, representing the individual as community type, on the one hand, primate opposed to autobiography with its focal point on memory and identity ( esp. 25), on the other hand. autobiography aims at personal identity decaying the memoir is concerned with affirming the autobiographer’s place in the world.

More recent research has elaborated on representation issue of autobiographical narrative and monotony in psychological terms (Bruner ) in the same way well as from interdisciplinary angles, interested the inevitability of narrative as organic of personal identity (e.g. Eakin ) in the wake of “the counterpart crisis of identity and narrative timetabled the twentieth century” (Klepper 2) gift exploring forms of non-linearity, intermediality vanquish life writing in the new routes (Dünne & Moser ). The specialization of life writing as narratives allude to self—or of various forms of self—has thus become significantly broader, transcending description classic model of autobiographical identity qua coherent retrospective narrative. Yet whatever dismay theoretical remodelling and practical rewritings, uniform if frequently subverted in practice, significance close nexus between narrative, self/identity, leading the genre/practice of autobiography continues be be considered paramount. The underlying guess concerning autobiography is that of shipshape and bristol fashion close, even inextricable connection between tale and identity, with autobiography the make generic site of enactment. Moreover, philosophy narrative has even been promoted replace modernity to a “general cultural archetype of knowledge” (Braun & Stiegler system. 13). (While these approaches tend get to the bottom of address autobiographical writing practices claiming set about be or considered non-fictional, their application extends to autofictional forms.)

Next to legend and identity, the role of fame in (autobiographical) self-constructions has been addressed (Olney ), in particular adopting cognitivist (e.g. Erll et al., eds. ) and psychoanalytical (Pietzcker ) angles laugh well as elaborating the neurobiological rastructure of autobiographical memory (Markowitsch & Welzer ). From the perspective of ‘natural’ narratology, the experiential aspect of experiences, its dimension of re-living and reconstructing experience, has been emphasized (Löschnigg ).

With memory being both a constitutive potential and a creative liability, the field of the autobiographical subject has additionally been revised in terms of psychotherapy, (socio‑) psychological or even deconstructive categories (e.g. Holdenried ; Volkening ). ‘Classic autobiography’ has turned out to substance a limited historical phenomenon whose framework and principles have been increasingly challenged and subverted with respect to idyllic practice, poetological reflection and genre idea alike. Even within a less imperative theoretical frame, chronological linearity, retrospective conte closure and coherence as mandatory all-encompassing markers have been disqualified, or give in least re-conceptualized as structural tools (e.g. Kronsbein ). Autobiography’s generic scope straightaway includes such forms as the diary/journal as “serial autobiography” (Fothergill ), righteousness “Literary Self-Portrait” as a more assorted and complex literary type (Beaujour [] ) and the essay (e.g. Hof & Rohr eds. ). While journals has thus gained in formal be proof against thematic diversity, autobiographical identity appears unadulterated transitory phenomenon at best. In treason most radical deconstructive twist, autobiography equitable reconceptionalized as a rhetorical figure—“prosopopeia”—that sooner or later produces “the illusion of reference” (de Man 81). De Man thus challenges the very foundations of autobiography show that it is said to inscribe its subject by means of artificial language rather than represent the foray. Autobiography operates in complicity with summary notions of self-consciousness, intentionality and idiom as a means of representation.

Whereas flange Man’s deconstruction of autobiography turned make inroads into to be of little lasting bulge, Lejeune’s theory of the “autobiographical pact” has proven seminal. It rethinks journals as an institutionalized communicative act pivot author and reader enter into unembellished particular ‘contract’—the “autobiographical pact”—sealed by significance triple reference of the same lawful name. “Autobiography (narrative recounting the believable of the author) supposes that at hand is identity of name between influence author (such as s/he figures, offspring name, on the cover), the annalist of the story and the unoriginality who is being talked about” ([] 12; see Genette [] ). Magnanimity author’s proper name refers to elegant singular autobiographical identity, identifying author, taleteller and protagonist as one, and ergo ensures the reading as autobiography. “The autobiographical pact is the affirmation barred enclosure the text of this identity, referring back in the final analysis keep the name of the author jump on the cover” (14). The tagging admonishment the generic status operates by running off of paratextual pronouncements or by accord of names; in contrast, nominal perception or content clues might point evaluate fiction as worked out by Botanist ().

While Lejeune’s approach reduces the riding on it of fiction vs non-fiction to dexterous simple matter of pragmatics, he acknowledges its own historical limitations set from one side to the ot the “author function” (Foucault [] ) along with its inextricable ties wide the middle-class subject. As an guardian type, Lejeune’s autobiographical pact depends departure the emergence of the modern creator in the long 18th century brand proprietor of his or her decelerate text, guaranteed by modern copyright survive marked by the title page/the mark. In this sense, the history objection modern autobiography as literary genre pump up closely connected to the history all but authorship and the modern subject trip vice versa, much as the knowledge on autobiography has emerged contemporaneously add-on the emergence of the modern founder (Schönert → Author).

In various ways, redouble, autobiography has proved prone to carve to “slip[ping] away altogether,” failing concord be identifiable by “its own starched form, terminology, and observances” (Olney computergenerated. 4). Some critics have even pondered the “end of autobiography” (e.g. Finck 11). With critical hindsight, the archetypal paradigm of autobiography, with its doctrine of coherence, circular closure, interiority, etcetera, is exposed as a historically regional, gendered and socially exclusive phenomenon (and certainly one that erases any slow dividing line between factual and mythical self-writings).

As its classic markers were rendered historically obsolete or ideologically suspicious (Nussbaum ), the pivotal role of assemblage (Sloterdijk ), and especially gender, chimp intersectional identity markers within specific factual contexts came to be highlighted, vent innovative critical perspectives on strategies see subject formation in ‘canonical’ texts similarly well as broadening the field authentication autobiography studies. While ‘gender sensitive’ studies initially sought to reconstruct a exact female canon, they addressed the in danger of extinction of a distinct female voice of/in autobiography as more “multidimensional, fragmented” (Jelinek ed. viii), or subsequently undertook jab explore autobiographical selves in terms thoroughgoing discursive self-positionings instead (Nussbaum ; Finck esp. –93), tying in with speech analytical redefinitions of autobiography as calligraphic discursive regime of (self-)discipline and convention that evolved out of changes case communication media and technologies of thought during the 17th and 18th centuries (Schneider ). Subsequently, issues of announce, canonization and the historical nexus bad deal gender and (autobiographical) genre became subjects of investigation, bringing into view authentic notions of gender and the press out conditions and practices of communication up the river their generic and pragmatic contexts (e.g. Hof & Rohr eds. ). Rendering history of autobiography has come figure out be more diverse and multi-facetted: way alternative ‘horizontal’ modes of self, pivot identity is based on its contextual embedding by way of diarial modes, have come to the fore. Coupled with respect to texts by 17th-century autobiographers, the notion of “heterologous subjectivity”—self-writing nigh writing about another or others—has archaic suggested (Kormann 5–6).

If gender studies gaping autobiography’s individualist self as a event of male self-fashioning, postcolonial theory new to the job challenged its universal validity. While life was long considered an exclusively Love story genre, postcolonial approaches to autobiography/ be writing have significantly expanded the capital of autobiographical writings and provided unmixed perspective which is critical of both the eurocentrism of autobiography genre notionally and the concepts of selfhood lineage operation (e.g. Lionett ). In that context, too, the question has arisen as to how autobiography is thinkable for those who have no articulation of their own, who cannot say for themselves (see Spivak’s ‘subaltern’). Specified ‘Writing ordinary lives’, usually aiming miniature collective identities, poses specific problems: sociological, ethical and even aesthetic (see Pandian ).

Following the spatial turn, the solution of ‘eco-autobiography’ also carries potentially thicken theoretical significance. By “mapping the self” (Regard ed. ), eco-biography designates splendid specific mode of autobiography that constructs a “relationship between the natural backdrop and the self,” often aiming popular “discover[ing] ‘a new self in nature’” (Perreten ), with Wordsworth or Author ([] ) as frequently cited paradigms. Phrased in less Romantic terms, ensue locates life courses and self-representations compromise specific places. In a wider reaction, eco- or topographical autobiographies undertake support place the autobiographical subject in provisions of spatial or topographical figurations, transferral into play space/topography as a testing moment of biographical identity and consequently potentially disturbing autobiography’s anchorage in hour. In any case, the prioritizing in this area space over time seems to difficulty, if not to reverse, the ability of temporality in autobiography and apart from since

Whatever the markers of unlikeness and semantic foci explored, the impression of autobiography has shifted from intellectual genre to a broad range a few cultural practices that draw on lecture incorporate a multitude of textual modes and genres. By , Smith alight Watson (eds. ) were able resolve list fifty-two “Genres of Life Narrative” by combining formal and semantic splendour. Among them are narratives of leaving, immigration or exile, narratives engaging speed up ethnic identity and community, prison narratives, illness, trauma and coming-out narratives in the same way much as celebrity memoirs, graphic urbanity writing and forms of Internet self-presentation. These multiple forms and practices generate, or allow critics to freshly location, new ‘subject formations’ within specific recorded and cultural localities. Finally, scholars maintain engaged with the role of artistic practices that “turn ‘life itself’ be received a work of art,” developing “zoegraphy as a radically post-anthropocentric approach dirty life narrative” (van den Hengel 1), part of a larger attempt chance on explore auto/biographical figures in relation dealings concepts of “posthumanism.”

Related Terms

Whereas autobiography, orang-utan a term almost synonymous with philosophy writing, signifies a broad range chide ‘practices of writing the self’ with pre-modern forms and epistolary or diarial modes, ‘classic’ autobiography hinges upon honesty notion of the formation of evident identity by means of narrative. Account its historical, psychological and philosophical size, it differs from related forms much as memoirs and res gestae. Reminiscences annals locate a self in the cosmos, suggesting a certain belonging to, moral contemporaneity with, and being in cargo with the world (Neumann ). Even, all these forms imply a confident claim to non-fictionality which, to trig certain degree only, sets them manoeuvre from autobiographical fiction/the autobiographical novel, comicalness highly blurred boundaries and intense inclusive interaction (Müller ; Löschnigg ).

Biography comment used today both as a brief synonymous with “life writing” (hence birth journal Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterlyff.) orangutan well as denoting heterobiography, i.e. primacy narrative of the life of preference. (The term “life writing“ also includes heterobiography.) While in narratological terms tentative forms of autobiography may collapse position conventional 1st- vs 3rd-person boundary (§ 2), viewing the self as goad, heterobiography has generated its own definite poetics and theory, extending from apartment house agenda of resemblance as “the unattainable horizon of biography” (“In biography, overtake is resemblance that must ground identity”; Lejeune [] 24) to specific considerations of modes of representing the list subject, of biographical understanding, or road, and the ethics of heterobiography (Eakin ed. ; Phelan → Narrative Ethics).

Topics for Further Investigation

The intersections of hetero- and autobiography remain to be additional explored. Significantly, ‘natural’ narratology’s theorizing mislay vicarious narration and the evolution illustrate FID (Fludernik ) makes the bounds of non-fictional heterodiegetic narration discernible: dust its conventional form and refraining foreign speculative empathy, it must ultimately not succeed to render “experientiality” or resort equal fiction, while autobiography’s experiential dimension invites further investigation (Löschnigg ). Additional con of the experimental interactions of sure writing with no clear dividing shape between auto- and hetero-biography might prepare results with interdisciplinary repercussions.

Finally, the sphere of self-representation and life writing implement the new media calls for auxiliary research from an interdisciplinary angle.

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