American autobiography
E Barry
12 points
* 2 hours per week
* First semester
* Clayton
Objectives On the successful completion of this subject students should have gained a familiarity with a broad spectrum of American autobiographical narratives ranging across historical periods; cultural and racial backgrounds and gender representation; an understanding of the ways in which the self is constructed in literature; and a grasp of the relevant theoretical approaches to the genre.
Synopsis This subject will explore the nature of the autobiographical impulse in American literature in all its diversity, from the eighteenth century through to the present. The set texts will allow an examination of the ways in which the self is constructed in literature, and the roles that gender, race and class play in that construction. In other words, the emphasis of the subject will be as much on the nature of the autobiographical process as on its particularly American forms. But it will also relate this construction of the self to the American cult of individualism, and examine how such personal writing might relate to a `national' literature. The subject will examine a wide range of autobiographical acts, in the light of each one's historical\cultural contexts and of contemporary theory regarding this narrative mode. Some comparisons will be made to self-portraiture in painting and photography.
Assessment Seminar paper (15 minutes): 20%
* Seminar paper/essay
(3000 words): 30%
* Research essay (5000 words): 40%
* Seminar
participation: 10%
Prescribed texts
Adams H The education of Henry Adams
Adams J Twenty years at Hull-House
Andrews W (ed.) Classic American autobiographies Signet
Angelou M I know why the caged bird sings
Dillard A An American childhood
Haley A The autobiography of Malcolm X
Kingston M H The woman warrior
Nabokov V Speak, memory
Stein G The autobiography of Alice B Toklas
Thoreau H Walden
Recommended texts
Adams T D Telling lies in modern American autobiography
Benstock S Theory and practice of women's autobiographical writing
Bercovitch S The puritan origins of the American self
Folkenflick R The culture of autobiography
Heilbrun C Writing a woman's life
Leibiwitz H Fabricating lives: Explorations in American autobiography
Olney J Autobiography: Essays theoretical and critical
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