Handbook of Autobiography / Autofiction

Handbook of Autobiography / Autofiction PDF Author: Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110279819
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 2220

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Book Description
Autobiographical writings have been a major cultural genre from antiquity to the present time. General questions of the literary as, e.g., the relation between literature and reality, truth and fiction, the dependency of author, narrator, and figure, or issues of individual and cultural styles etc., can be studied preeminently in the autobiographical genre. Yet, the tradition of life-writing has, in the course of literary history, developed manifold types and forms. Especially in the globalized age, where the media and other technological / cultural factors contribute to a rapid transformation of lifestyles, autobiographical writing has maintained, even enhanced, its popularity and importance. By conceiving autobiography in a wide sense that includes memoirs, diaries, self-portraits and autofiction as well as media transformations of the genre, this three-volume handbook offers a comprehensive survey of theoretical approaches, systematic aspects, and historical developments in an international and interdisciplinary perspective. While autobiography is usually considered to be a European tradition, special emphasis is placed on the modes of self-representation in non-Western cultures and on inter- and transcultural perspectives of the genre. The individual contributions are closely interconnected by a system of cross-references. The handbook addresses scholars of cultural and literary studies, students as well as non-academic readers.

Handbook of Autobiography / Autofiction

Handbook of Autobiography / Autofiction PDF Author: Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110279819
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 2220

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Book Description
Autobiographical writings have been a major cultural genre from antiquity to the present time. General questions of the literary as, e.g., the relation between literature and reality, truth and fiction, the dependency of author, narrator, and figure, or issues of individual and cultural styles etc., can be studied preeminently in the autobiographical genre. Yet, the tradition of life-writing has, in the course of literary history, developed manifold types and forms. Especially in the globalized age, where the media and other technological / cultural factors contribute to a rapid transformation of lifestyles, autobiographical writing has maintained, even enhanced, its popularity and importance. By conceiving autobiography in a wide sense that includes memoirs, diaries, self-portraits and autofiction as well as media transformations of the genre, this three-volume handbook offers a comprehensive survey of theoretical approaches, systematic aspects, and historical developments in an international and interdisciplinary perspective. While autobiography is usually considered to be a European tradition, special emphasis is placed on the modes of self-representation in non-Western cultures and on inter- and transcultural perspectives of the genre. The individual contributions are closely interconnected by a system of cross-references. The handbook addresses scholars of cultural and literary studies, students as well as non-academic readers.

Lydia Cabrera and the Construction of an Afro-Cuban Cultural Identity

Lydia Cabrera and the Construction of an Afro-Cuban Cultural Identity PDF Author: Edna M. Rodríguez-Plate
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807876283
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Lydia Cabrera (1900-1991), an upper-class white Cuban intellectual, spent many years traveling through Cuba collecting oral histories, stories, and music from Cubans of African descent. Her work is commonly viewed as an extension of the work of her famous brother-in-law, Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz, who initiated the study of Afro-Cubans and the concept of transculturation. Here, Edna Rodriguez-Mangual challenges this perspective, proposing that Cabrera's work offers an alternative to the hegemonizing national myth of Cuba articulated by Ortiz and others. Rodriguez-Mangual examines Cabrera's ethnographic essays and short stories in context. By blurring fact and fiction, anthropology and literature, Cabrera defied the scientific discourse used by other anthropologists. She wrote of Afro-Cubans not as objects but as subjects, and in her writings, whiteness, instead of blackness, is gazed upon as the "other." As Rodriguez-Mangual demonstrates, Cabrera rewrote the history of Cuba and its culture through imaginative means, calling into question the empirical basis of anthropology and placing Afro-Cuban contributions at the center of the literature that describes the Cuban nation and its national identity.

American Autobiography After 9/11

American Autobiography After 9/11 PDF Author: Megan Brown
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 0299310302
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 173

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Book Description
In the post-9/11 era, a flood of memoirs has wrestled with anxieties both personal and national.

The Routledge International Handbook on Narrative and Life History

The Routledge International Handbook on Narrative and Life History PDF Author: Ivor Goodson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317665708
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 875

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Book Description
In recent decades, there has been a substantial turn towards narrative and life history study. The embrace of narrative and life history work has accompanied the move to postmodernism and post-structuralism across a wide range of disciplines: sociological studies, gender studies, cultural studies, social history; literary theory; and, most recently, psychology. Written by leading international scholars from the main contributing perspectives and disciplines, The Routledge International Handbook on Narrative and Life History seeks to capture the range and scope as well as the considerable complexity of the field of narrative study and life history work by situating these fields of study within the historical and contemporary context. Topics covered include: • The historical emergences of life history and narrative study • Techniques for conducting life history and narrative study • Identity and politics • Generational history • Social and psycho-social approaches to narrative history With chapters from expert contributors, this volume will prove a comprehensive and authoritative resource to students, researchers and educators interested in narrative theory, analysis and interpretation.

Reading Autobiography

Reading Autobiography PDF Author: Sidonie Smith
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 0816669856
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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Book Description
projects, and an extensive bibliography. --Book Jacket.

Writing the Afro-Hispanic

Writing the Afro-Hispanic PDF Author: Conrad James
Publisher: Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd
ISBN: 1912234203
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
The impact of the African Diaspora in Spanish America is far greater than is understood or acknowledged in the English speaking world. Connected initially to the Spanish-Caribbean through trans-Atlantic slavery, Africa is so deeply ingrained in the biology and culture of these countries that, in the words of the Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen, it would require the work of a 'miniaturist to disentangle that hieroglyph.' Through complex explorations of narratives of Spanish Blacks in the Caribbean this collection of essays builds critically on mid and late twentieth century Afro-Hispanist scholarship and thereby amplifies the terms in which Africans in the Americas are generally discussed. Each of these essays deals with a pivotal aspect of the African experience in the Spanish speaking Caribbean from the period of slavery to the present day. The essays focus on Black African cultures in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic as well as in the circum Caribbean areas of Mexico and Colombia. In the process they cover a vast and highly involved range of issues including abolition and the politics of anti-slavery rhetoric, African women's political activism, performance poetry and female embodiment of the Black Diaspora, the Cuban Revolution and its investment in African liberation struggles, race and intra-Caribbean migration, ritualised spirituality and African healing practices among others. Through their investigation of both official and popular cultures in the Caribbean not only do the essays in this volume show the indispensable functions of African cultural capital in the Spanish speaking Caribbean but they also underline the multiple demographic, socio-political and institutional imperatives that are at stake in considering contemporary understandings of the African Diaspora.

Autobiographical Voices

Autobiographical Voices PDF Author: Françoise Lionnet
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501723111
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
Adopting a boldly innovative approach to women’s autobiographical writing, Françoise Lionnet here examines the rhetoric of self-portraiture in works by authors who are bilingual or multilingual or of mixed races or cultures. Autobiographical Voices offers incisive readings of texts by Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Angelou, Marie Cardinal, Maryse Condé, Marie-Thérèse Humbert, Augustine, and Nietzsche.

Postcolonialism & Autobiography

Postcolonialism & Autobiography PDF Author: Michelle Cliff
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9789042006850
Category : Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
The two volumes on Postcolonialism and Autobiography examine the affinity of postcolonial writing to the genre of autobiography. The contributions of specialists from Northern Africa, Europe and the United States focus on two areas in which the interrelation of postcolonialism and autobiography is very prominent and fertile: the Maghreb and the Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean. The colonial background of these regions provides the stimulus for writers to launch a program for emancipation in an effort to constitute a decolonized subject in autobiographical practice. While the French volume addresses issues of the autobiographical genre in the postcolonial conditions of the Maghreb and the Caribbean with reference to France, the English volume analyzes the autobiographical writings of David Dabydeen (Guyana), Michelle Cliff, Opal Palmer Adisa, George Lamming, Wilson Harris (Jamaica), and Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua) who have maintained their cultural Caribbean origin while living in England or the United States. Critics such as William Boelhower, Leigh Gilmore, Sidonie Smith, and Gayatri Spivak reveal the many layers of different cultures (Indian, African, European, American) that are covered over by the colonial powers. The homeland, exile, the experience of migration and hybridity condition the postcolonial existence of writers and critics. The incorporation of excerpts from the writers' works is meant to show the great variety and riches of a hybrid imagination and to engage in an interactive dialogue with critics.

Auto/Biography across the Americas

Auto/Biography across the Americas PDF Author: Ricia A. Chansky
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317337190
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Auto/biographical narratives of the Americas are marked by the underlying themes of movement and belonging. This collection proposes that the impact of the historic or contemporary movement of peoples to, in, and from the Americas—whether chosen or forced—motivates the ways in which identities are constructed in this contested space. Such movement results in a cyclical quest to belong, and to understand belonging, that reverberates through narratives of the Americas. The volume brings together essays written from diverse national, cultural, linguistic, and disciplinary perspectives to trace these transnational motifs in life writing across the Americas. Drawing on international scholars from the seemingly disparate regions of the Americas—North America, the Caribbean, and Latin America—this book extends critical theories of life writing beyond limiting national boundaries. The scholarship included approaches narrative inquiry from the fields of literature, linguistics, history, art history, sociology, anthropology, political science, pedagogy, gender studies, critical race studies, and indigenous studies. As a whole, this volume advances discourse in auto/biography studies, life writing, and identity studies by locating transnational themes in narratives of the Americas and placing them in international and interdisciplinary conversations.

Literature as History

Literature as History PDF Author: Mario T. García
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816534551
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Historical documents—and, for that matter, historical sources—exist in many forms. The traditional archival sources such as official documents, newspapers, correspondence, and diaries can be supplemented by personal archives, oral histories, and even works of fiction in order for historians to illuminate the past. Literature as History offers a critical new path for Chicano and Latino history. Historian Mario T. García analyzes prominent works of Chicano fiction, nonfiction, and autobiographical literature to explore how they can sometimes reveal even more about ordinary people’s lives. García argues that this approach can yield personal insights into historical events that more formal documents omit, lending insights into such diverse issues as gender identity, multiculturalism, sexuality, and the concerns of the working class. In a stimulating and imaginative look at the intersection of history and literature, García discusses the meaning and intent of narratives. Literature as History represents a unique way to rethink history. García, a leader in the field of Chicano history and one of the foremost historians of his generation, explores how Chicano historians can use Chicano and Latino literature as important historical sources. Autobiography, testimonio, and fiction are the genres the author researches to obtain new and insightful perspectives on Chicano history at the personal and grassroots levels. Breaking the boundaries between history and literature, García provides a thought-provoking discussion of what constitutes a historical source.