Autobiography

For information of autobiographies on Wikipedia, seeWikipedia:Autobiography.For other uses, seeAutobiography (disambiguation).

Saint Augustine of HippowroteConfessions,the first Western autobiography ever written, around 400. Portrait byPhilippe de Champaigne,17th century.

Anautobiography,sometimes informally called anautobio,is a self-writtenbiographyof one's own life.

Definition

The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly byWilliam Taylorin 1797 in theEnglishperiodicalTheMonthly Review,when he suggested the word as a hybrid, but condemned it as "pedantic". However, its next recorded use was in its present sense, byRobert Southeyin 1809.Despite only being named early in the nineteenth century, first-person autobiographical writing originates in antiquity. Roy Pascal differentiates autobiography from the periodic self-reflective mode of journal or diary writing by noting that "[autobiography] is a review of a life from a particular moment in time, while the diary, however reflective it may be, moves through a series of moments in time".Autobiography thus takes stock of the autobiographer's life from the moment of composition. While biographers generally rely on a wide variety of documents and viewpoints, autobiography may be based entirely on the writer's memory. Thememoirform is closely associated with autobiography but it tends, as Pascal claims, to focus less on the self and more on others during the autobiographer's review of their own life.

Biography

Life

Autobiographical works are by nature subjective. The inability—or unwillingness—of the author to accurately recall memories has in certain cases resulted in misleading or incorrect information. Some sociologists and psychologists have noted that autobiography offers the author the ability to recreate history.

Spiritual autobiography

Spiritual autobiography is an account of an author's struggle or journey towards God, followed by conversion a religious conversion, often interrupted by moments of regression. The author re-frames their life as a demonstration of divine intention through encounters with the Divine. The earliest example of a spiritual autobiography is Augustine'sConfessionsthough the tradition has expanded to include other religious traditions in works such asMohandas Gandhi'sAn AutobiographyandBlack Elk Speaks.Deliverance from ErrorbyAl-Ghazaliis another example. The spiritual autobiography often serves as an endorsement of the writer's religion.

Memoirs

Main article:Memoir

Amemoiris slightly different in character from an autobiography. While an autobiography typically focuses on the "life and times" of the writer, a memoir has a narrower, more intimate focus on the author's memories, feelings and emotions. Memoirs have often been written by politicians or military leaders as a way to record and publish an account of their public exploits. One early example is that ofJulius Caesar'sCommentarii de Bello Gallico,also known asCommentaries on the Gallic Wars.In the work, Caesar describes the battles that took place during the nine years that he spent fighting local armies in theGallic Wars.His second memoir,Commentarii de Bello Civili(orCommentaries on the Civil War) is an account of the events that took place between 49 and 48 BC inthe civil waragainstGnaeus Pompeiusand theSenate.

Leonor López de Córdoba(1362–1420) wrote what is supposed to be the first autobiography in Spanish. TheEnglish Civil War(1642–1651) provoked a number of examples of this genre, including works by SirEdmund Ludlowand SirJohn Reresby.French examples from the same period include the memoirs ofCardinal de Retz(1614–1679) and theDuc de Saint-Simon.

Fictional autobiography

The term "fictional autobiography" signifies novels about a fictional character written as though the character were writing their own autobiography, meaning that the character is the first-person narrator and that the novel addresses both internal and external experiences of the character.Daniel Defoe'sMoll Flandersis an early example.Charles Dickens'David Copperfieldis another such classic, andJ.D. Salinger'sThe Catcher in the Ryeis a well-known modern example of fictional autobiography.Charlotte Brontë'sJane Eyreis yet another example of fictional autobiography, as noted on the front page of the original version. The term may also apply to works of fiction purporting to be autobiographies of real characters, e.g.,Robert Nye'sMemoirs ofLord Byron.

Autobiography through the ages

The classical period: Apologia, oration, confession

In antiquity such works were typically entitledapologia,purporting to be self-justification rather than self-documentation. The title ofJohn Henry Newman's 1864 Christian confessional workApologia Pro Vita Suarefers to this tradition.

The historianFlavius Josephusintroduces his autobiographyJosephi Vita(c. 99) with self-praise, which is followed by a justification of his actions as a Jewish rebel commander of Galilee.

TherhetorLibanius(c. 314–394) framed his life memoirOration I(begun in 374) as one of hisorations,not of a public kind, but of a literary kind that would not be read aloud in privacy.

Augustine of Hippo(354–430) applied the titleConfessionsto his autobiographical work, andJean-Jacques Rousseauused the same title in the 18th century, initiating the chain of confessional and sometimes racy and highly self-critical autobiographies of theRomantic eraand beyond. Augustine's was arguably the first Western autobiography ever written, and became an influential model for Christian writers throughout theMiddle Ages.It tells of thehedonisticlifestyle Augustine lived for a time within his youth, associating with young men who boasted of their sexual exploits; his following and leaving of the anti-sex and anti-marriageManichaeismin attempts to seek sexual morality; and his subsequent return toChristianitydue to his embracement ofSkepticismand theNew Academymovement (developing the view that sex is good, and that virginity is better, comparing the former to silver and the latter to gold; Augustine's views subsequently strongly influenced Western theology).Confessionsis considered one of the great masterpieces of western literature.

Peter Abelard's 12th-centuryHistoria Calamitatumis in the spirit of Augustine'sConfessions,an outstanding autobiographical document of its period.

Early autobiographies

A scene from theBaburnama

In the 15th century,Leonor López de Córdoba,a Spanish noblewoman, wrote herMemorias,which may be the first autobiography inCastillian.

Zāhir ud-Dīn Mohammad Bābur,who founded theMughal dynastyofSouth Asiakept a journalBāburnāma(Chagatai/Persian:بابر نامہ;literally:"Book of Babur"or"Letters of Babur") which was written between 1493 and 1529.

One of the first great autobiographies of theRenaissanceis that of the sculptor and goldsmithBenvenuto Cellini(1500–1571), written between 1556 and 1558, and entitled by him simplyVita(Italian:Life). He declares at the start: "No matter what sort he is, everyone who has to his credit what are or really seem great achievements, if he cares for truth and goodness, ought to write the story of his own life in his own hand; but no one should venture on such a splendid undertaking before he is over forty."These criteria for autobiography generally persisted until recent times, and most serious autobiographies of the next three hundred years conformed to them.

Another autobiography of the period isDe vita propria,by the Italian mathematician, physician and astrologerGerolamo Cardano(1574).

One of the first autobiographies written in anIndian languagewasArdhakathānaka,written byBanarasidas,who was aShrimal Jainbusinessman and poet ofMughal India.The poetic autobiographyArdhakathānaka(The Half Story), was composed inBraj Bhasa,an early dialect ofHindilinked with the region aroundMathura.In his autobiography, he describes his transition from an unruly youth, to a religious realization by the time the work was composed.The work also is notable for many details of life in Mughal times.

The earliest known autobiography written in English is theBook of Margery Kempe,written in 1438.Following in the earlier tradition of a life story told as an act of Christian witness, the book describesMargery Kempe's pilgrimages to theHoly LandandRome,her attempts to negotiate a celibate marriage with her husband, and most of all her religious experiences as a Christian mystic. Extracts from the book were published in the early sixteenth century but the whole text was published for the first time only in 1936.

Possibly the first publicly available autobiography written in English was Captain John Smith's autobiography published in 1630which was regarded by many as not much more than a collection of tall tales told by someone of doubtful veracity. This changed with the publication of Philip Barbour's definitive biography in 1964 which, amongst other things, established independent factual bases for many of Smith's "tall tales", many of which could not have been known by Smith at the time of writing unless he was actually present at the events recounted.

Other notable English autobiographies of the 17th century include those ofLord Herbert of Cherbury(1643, published 1764) andJohn Bunyan(Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners,1666).

Jarena Lee(1783–1864) was the first African American woman to have a published biography in the United States.

18th and 19th centuries

Cover of the first English edition ofBenjamin Franklin's autobiography, 1793

Following the trend ofRomanticism,which greatly emphasized the role and the nature of the individual, and in the footsteps ofJean-Jacques Rousseau'sConfessions,a more intimate form of autobiography, exploring the subject's emotions, came into fashion.Stendhal's autobiographical writings of the 1830s,The Life of Henry BrulardandMemoirs of an Egotist,are both avowedly influenced by Rousseau.An English example isWilliam Hazlitt'sLiber Amoris(1823), a painful examination of the writer's love-life.

With the rise of education, cheap newspapers and cheap printing, modern concepts of fame and celebrity began to develop, and the beneficiaries of this were not slow to cash in on this by producing autobiographies. It became the expectation—rather than the exception—that those in the public eye should write about themselves—not only writers such asCharles Dickens(who also incorporated autobiographical elements in his novels) andAnthony Trollope,but also politicians (e.g.Henry Brooks Adams), philosophers (e.g.John Stuart Mill), churchmen such asCardinal Newman,and entertainers such asP. T. Barnum.Increasingly, in accordance with romantic taste, these accounts also began to deal, amongst other topics, with aspects of childhood and upbringing—far removed from the principles of "Cellinian" autobiography.

20th and 21st centuries

From the 17th century onwards, "scandalous memoirs" by supposedlibertines,serving a public taste for titillation, have been frequently published. Typicallypseudonymous,they were (and are) largely works of fiction written byghostwriters.So-called "autobiographies" of modern professional athletes and media celebrities—and to a lesser extent about politicians—generally written by a ghostwriter, are routinely published. Some celebrities, such asNaomi Campbell,admit to not having read their "autobiographies".Some sensationalist autobiographies such as James Frey'sA Million Little Pieceshave been publicly exposed as having embellished or fictionalized significant details of the authors' lives.

Autobiography has become an increasingly popular and widely accessible form.A Fortunate LifebyAlbert Facey(1979) has become an Australian literary classic.With the critical and commercial success in the United States of such memoirs asAngela’s AshesandThe Color of Water,more and more people have been encouraged to try their hand at this genre.Maggie Nelson's bookThe Argonautsis one of the recent autobiographies.Maggie Nelsoncalls itautotheory—a combination of autobiography and critical theory.

A genre where the "claim for truth" overlaps with fictional elements though the work still purports to be autobiographical isautofiction.

See also

• Category:Autobiographies
• Alphabiography
• Autobiographical comics
• Autobiographical memory
• Autobiographical novel
• Autofiction
• I-novel
• Letter collection
• List of autobiographies
• Memoir
• Unreliable narrator

Bibliography

• Barros, Carolyn (1998).Autobiography: Narrative of Transformation.Ann Arbor:University of Michigan Press.

• Buckley, Jerome Hamilton (1994).The Turning Key: Autobiography and the Subjective Impulse Since 1800.Cambridge:Harvard University Press.

• Ferrieux, Robert (2001).L'Autobiographie en Grande-Bretagne et en Irlande.Paris:Ellipses. p. 384.ISBN9782729800215.

• Lejeune, Philippe (1989).On Autobiography.Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press.

• Olney, James (1998).Memory & Narrative: The Weave of Life-Writing.Chicago:The University of Chicago Press.

• Pascal, Roy (1960).Design and Truth in Autobiography.Cambridge:Harvard University Press.

• Reynolds, Dwight F., ed. (2001).Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition.Berkeley:University of California Press.

• Wu, Pey-Yi (1990).The Confucian's Progress: Autobiographical Writings in Traditional China.Princeton:Princeton University Press.

External links

• Quotations related toAutobiographyat Wikiquote
• The dictionary definition ofautobiographyat Wiktionary