Autobiography: A Very Short Introduction Audiobook (Free)

Autobiography is among the most popular of written forms. From Casanova to Benjamin Franklin to the Kardashians, individuals throughout history have got recorded their very own lives and experiences. These personal writings are central to the work of literary critics, philosophers, historians and psychologists, who’ve within autobiographies from across the centuries not merely an understanding from the ways that lives have already been lived, however the most fundamental accounts of what this means to be always a self in the world.

In this Very Short Introduction Laura Marcus defines what we should mean by ‘autobiography’, and considers its romantic relationship with similar literary forms such as memoirs, journals, words, diaries, and essays. Analyzing the core themes in autobiographical composing, such as for example confession, transformation and testimony; romanticism as well as the journeying self; Marcus discusses the autobiographical consciousness (and the roles played by time, memory and identity), and considers the relationship between psychoanalysis and autobiography. Discovering the styles of self-portraiture and efficiency, Marcus also discusses the ways in which fiction and autobiography possess shaped each other.