Auto/Biographical Discourses

Bol

This work explores the significance of the genre of autobiography. Drawing on a range of writings, both literary and theoretical the text shows how biography and autobiography have been crucial in debates over subject and object, public and private - debates now figured in feminist theory. In the forefront of the large and growing interest in life-writings. A comprehensive account of the criticism and theory of autobiography. The book makes complex debates accessible to a wide readership. In the forefront of the large and growing interest in life-writings. A comprehensive account of the criticism and theory of autobiography. The book makes complex debates accessible to a wide readership.

Bol Partner

Marcus (Center for Language and Literature, Birkbeck College) explores autobiography as a genre and as an organizing concept in 19th- and 20th-century thought. She shows how autobiography and biography have been critical in debates over public and private in feminist theory, examines the significance of the genre in eugenics, and discusses the "new biography" of Lytton Strachey and Virginia Woolf. She also considers recent theories of subjectivity, contemporary autobiographical writings, and feminist theories of life-writing. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.