Altered Egos Authority in American Autobiography |
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Author:
| Couser, G. Thomas |
ISBN: | 978-1-280-52390-8 |
Publication Date: | Jan 1989 |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press
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Book Format: | Ebook |
List Price: | USD $99.90 |
Book Description:
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This work is concerned with the 'authority' of autobiography. Couser considers recent critiques of the notion of autobiography as issuing from, determined by, referring to a pre-existing self. He examines the autobiographies of Benjamin Franklin, P. T. Barnum, and Mark Twain and appraises the authority of autobiography in the rather different circumstances of the minority writer: in slave narratives, the Civil War diaries of Mary Chesnut, and contemporary works by Richard Rodriguez and...
More DescriptionThis work is concerned with the 'authority' of autobiography. Couser considers recent critiques of the notion of autobiography as issuing from, determined by, referring to a pre-existing self. He examines the autobiographies of Benjamin Franklin, P. T. Barnum, and Mark Twain and appraises the authority of autobiography in the rather different circumstances of the minority writer: in slave narratives, the Civil War diaries of Mary Chesnut, and contemporary works by Richard Rodriguez and Maxine Hong Kingston. The work treats autobiographical writing as a struggle for literary control over the life of the author, against the constraints of genre, language, and society.