Synopses & Reviews
In this new critical study, Laura Marcus explores autobiography as a genre and as an organizing concept in nineteenth and twentieth century thought. Drawing on a wide range of writings, both literary and theoretical, she shows how autobiography and biography have been crucial in debates over subject and object, public and private, fact and fiction--debates now refigured in feminist theory. Autobiography has itself been perceived as an unstable and hybrid genre: it appears either as a dangerous double agent moving between these oppositions, or as a magical instrument of their reconciliation. This book explores the significance of the genre in eugenics and theories of "genius;" the "new biography" of Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf and others; autobiography and historical consciousness of subjectivity and genre; as well as contemporary autobiographical writings and feminist theories of life-writing.
Review
“[T]his is a scholarly and challenging work. Its depth of research, elegant argument and impressive grasp of detail will ensure it becomes a classic of autobiographical criticism.” —
Times Higher Educational Supplement“Scholarly, and beautifully written, this is one of the most important books of the year.” —Studies in English Literature
Synopsis
In the forefront of the large and growing interest in life-writings. A comprehensive account of the criticism and theory of autobiography. The book makes complex debates accessible to a wide readership.
Synopsis
In this new critical study, Laura Marcus explores autobiography as a genre and as an organizing concept in nineteenth and twentieth century thought. Drawing on a wide range of writings, both literary and theoretical, she shows how autobiography and biography have been crucial in debates over subject and object, public and private, fact and fiction--debates now refigured in feminist theory. Autobiography has itself been perceived as an unstable and hybrid genre: it appears either as a dangerous double agent moving between these oppositions, or as a magical instrument of their reconciliation. This book explores the significance of the genre in eugenics and theories of "genius;" the "new biography" of Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf and others; autobiography and historical consciousness of subjectivity and genre; as well as contemporary autobiographical writings and feminist theories of life-writing.
About the Author
Laura Marcus is Lecturer in English and Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Table of Contents
Introduction * Identity into Form: Nineteenth-Century Auto/biographical Discourses * Auto/biography: Between Literature and Science * Bringing the Corpse to Life; Woolf, Strachey and the Discourse of the 'New Biography' * Autobiography and Historical Consciousness * Saving the Subject * The Law of Genre * Auto/biographical Spaces * Bibliography * Index