Touching the world : reference in autobiography / Paul John Eakin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Eakin, Paul John.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American prose literature--History and criticism.

American prose literature.

Authors, American--Biography--History and criticism.

Authors, American.

Authors, French--Biography--History and criticism.

Authors, French.

French prose literature--History and criticism.

French prose literature.

Reference (Philosophy).

Autobiography.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (259 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c1992.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Paul John Eakin's earlier work Fictions in Autobiography is a key text in autobiography studies. In it he proposed that the self that finds expression in autobiography is in fundamental ways a kind of fictive construct, a fiction articulated in a fiction. In this new book Eakin turns his attention to what he sees as the defining assumption of autobiography: that the story of the self does refer to a world of biographical and historical fact. Here he shows that people write autobiography not in some private realm of the autonomous self but rather in strenuous engagement with the pressures that life in culture entails. In so demonstrating, he offers fresh readings of autobiographies by Roland Barthes, Nathalie Sarraute, William Maxwell, Henry James, Ronald Fraser, Richard Rodriguez, Henry Adams, Patricia Hampl, John Updike, James McConkey, and Lillian Hellman. In the introduction Eakin makes a case for reopening the file on reference in autobiography, and in the first chapter he establishes the complexity of the referential aesthetic of the genre, the intricate interplay of fact and fiction in such texts. In subsequent chapters he explores some of the major contexts of reference in autobiography: the biographical, the social and cultural, the historical, and finally, underlying all the rest, the somatic and temporal dimensions of the lived experience of identity. In his discussion of contemporary theories of the self, Eakin draws especially on cultural anthropology and developmental psychology.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE. The Referential Aesthetic of Autobiography

CHAPTER TWO. Henry James's "Obscure Hurt": Can Autobiography Serve Biography?

CHAPTER THREE. Self and Culture in Autobiography: Models of Identity and the Limits of Language

CHAPTER FOUR. Living in History

CHAPTER FIVE. Autobiography and the Structures of Experience

Works Cited

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 231-242) and index.

ISBN:

1-282-50568-8

9786612505683

1-4008-2064-2

1-4008-1143-0

OCLC:

700682085