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.
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.
Introduction
1. Identity into form: nineteenth-century auto/biographical
discourses
2. Auto/biography: between literature and science
3. Bringing the corpse to life; Woolf, Strachey and the discourse
of the 'new biography'
4. Autobiography and historical consciousness
5. Saving the subject
6. The law of genre
7. Auto/biographical spaces
Bibliography
Index
Laura Marcus is Lecturer in English and Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London
"[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"
“[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"
0;[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.1;
2;"Times Higher Educational Supplement"
0;Scholarly, and beautifully written, this is one of the most
important books of the year.1; 2;"Studies in English
Literature"
" [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"
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