For music albums named Autobiography, see Greekeauton = self, bios = life and graphein = write) is a form of biography, the writing of a life story. The difference, of course, is point of view: an autobiography is from the viewpoint of its subject. Biographers generally rely on a wide variety of documents and viewpoints; an autobiography may be based entirely on the writer's memory. A name for such a work in Antiquity was an apologia, essentially more self-justification than introspection. John Henry Newman's autobiography is his Apologia pro vita sua.Augustine applied the title Confessions to his autobiographical work (and Jean_Jacques Rousseau took up the same title). The pagan rhetor Libanius framed his life memoir as one of his orations, not the public kind, but the literary kind that would be read aloud in the privacy of one's study.
A memoir is slightly different from an autobiography. Where an autobiography focuses on the "life and times" of the character, a memoir has a narrower, more intimate focus on his or her own memories, feelings and emotions.
For example, the autobiography of an American Civil War general might include sections on the nature of slavery, the origins of the Civil War, and the political career of Abraham Lincoln. But the memoir of a Civil War general would focus on his personal reasons for joining the battle, the effect of the war on his mind and soul, and the joy and fear he felt on the battlefield.
Until the last 20 years or so, few people without some degree of fame tried to write and publish a memoir. But with the critical and commercial success of such memoirs as "Angela's Ashes" and "The Color of Water," more and more people have been encouraged to try their hand at this genre.
An autobiographical novel is a novel based on the life of the author.
Kenneth Rexroth, An Autobiographical Novel (1966), The title was suggested by the original publisher to reduce the risk of libel suits.
Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, a mock autobiography of Stein's secretary and companion, purporting to be Toklas's views of Stein.
Autobiographers of the early twenty-first century who choose to work with their diaries might turn not to personal archives that have evaded public inspection, as Gibson and Green have, but to entries they have posted online for the world to view.
Autobiographical narrators, whatever their stories, often connect with others in new ways as well, especially when their stories resonate with the stories of people in a compatible group or "a community of secret knowers" (15).
The autobiographical writing enables hooks to recapture the fl culture of her youth and in her mind to rescue the girl she once was.
Feeds |
Contact