Altered egos : authority in American autobiography / G. Thomas Couser.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Couser, G. Thomas.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Autobiography.

Authority in literature.

American prose literature--History and criticism.

American prose literature.

Physical Description:

ix, 285 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 1989.

Summary:

In this work, Couser explores the authority of American autobiography in several related senses. First, the idea that autobiography is authoritative writing because it is presumably verifiable. Second, the idea that one's life is one's exclusive textual domain. Third, the idea that, because of the apparent congruence between the implicit ideology of the genre and that of the nation, autobiography has a special prestige in America.

Contents:

1 Prologue: The Case of the Counterfeit Autobiography 3

2 Introduction: Authority, Autobiography, America 13

3 The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: Self-Constitutional Conventions 28

4 Prose and Cons: The Autobiographies of P. T. Barnum 52

5 False "I's": Mark Twain's Pseudonymous Autobiography 70

6 (En)Slave(d) Narrative: Early Afro-American Autobiography 110

7 Mary Boykin Chesnut: Secession, Confederacy, Reconstruction 156

8 Black Elk Speaks With Forked Tongue 189

9 Biculturalism in Contemporary Autobiography: Richard Rodriguez and Maxine Hong Kingston 210.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

019505833X

OCLC:

18907364