| Kommentar |
While autobiography and biography have long featured in literary studies (not only with regard to various literary genres but also to literary theory and methodology), more recent scholarship in English and American studies has moved away from the classical literary genres of life writing to address new developments, especially with regard to cultural transformations of modern and contemporary societies in the transatlantic and transnational Anglophone world. In short, the canon has significantly expanded. Spanning diverse texts, genres, and media, from classical confessional autobiography and (hetero-)biography, via diaries and letters, to the very recent Netflix self-stagings of Harry & Meghan, life writing is concerned with writing a life – one’s own or another’s, part or whole, retrospective or ongoing, prose or verse, literary or popular, oral, written, visual or auditory. In any case, life writing is tied in with the construction of/reflection upon identity.
Starting in the eighteenth century, this seminar is designed to study both texts of the traditional life writing canon (in close relation to the genre of the novel/fiction) as well as to pursue some of the more recent issues and phenomena, thus expanding the canon towards a broad range of genres and media, including graphic autobiographies/novels, video materials, and the social media. Special attention will also be given on life writing in poetry. While some mandatory reading is stipulated, the class will be invited to make a decision at the beginning of term as to which more recent popular material it wishes to investigate.
The core reading will be:
- Delarivier Manley, The Adventures of Rivella[1714] (broadview edition; please obtain your own copy)
- James Boswell, Life of Johnson[1791] [extracts]
- William Wordsworth, The Prelude[1815 & 1850] [extracts]
- Virginia Woolf: Moments of Being [first published 1976] (Harvest Book edition; please obtain your own copy)
- Richard Holmes: Footsteps. Adventures of a Romantic Biographer[1985] [extracts].
Extracts will be uploaded on Moodle. Further materials (primary and secondary texts) will also be made available through Moodle.
|
