Autobiography

Definition of autobiography.

Autobiography is one type of biography , which tells the life story of its author, meaning it is a written record of the author’s life. Rather than being written by somebody else, an autobiography comes through the person’s own pen, in his own words. Some autobiographies are written in the form of a fictional tale; as novels or stories that closely mirror events from the author’s real life. Such stories include Charles Dickens ’ David Copperfield  and J.D Salinger’s The Catcher in The Rye . In writing about personal experience, one discovers himself. Therefore, it is not merely a collection of anecdotes – it is a revelation to the readers about the author’s self-discovery.

Difference between Autobiography and Memoir

In an autobiography, the author attempts to capture important elements of his life. He not only deals with his career, and growth as a person, he also uses emotions and facts related to family life, relationships, education, travels, sexuality, and any types of inner struggles. A memoir is a record of memories and particular events that have taken place in the author’s life. In fact, it is the telling of a story or an event from his life; an account that does not tell the full record of a life.

Six Types of Autobiography

There are six types of autobiographies:

  • Autobiography: A personal account that a person writes himself/herself.
  • Memoir : An account of one’s memory.
  • Reflective Essay : One’s thoughts about something.
  • Confession: An account of one’s wrong or right doings.
  • Monologue : An address of one’s thoughts to some audience or interlocuters.
  • Biography : An account of the life of other persons written by someone else.

Importance of Autobiography

Autobiography is a significant genre in literature. Its significance or importance lies in authenticity, veracity, and personal testimonies. The reason is that people write about challenges they encounter in their life and the ways to tackle them. This shows the veracity and authenticity that is required of a piece of writing to make it eloquent, persuasive, and convincing.

Examples of Autobiography in Literature

Example #1:  the box: tales from the darkroom by gunter grass.

A noble laureate and novelist, Gunter Grass , has shown a new perspective of self-examination by mixing up his quilt of fictionalized approach in his autobiographical book, “The Box: Tales from the Darkroom.” Adopting the individual point of view of each of his children, Grass narrates what his children think about him as their father and a writer. Though it is really an experimental approach, due to Grass’ linguistic creativity and dexterity, it gains an enthralling momentum.

Example #2:  The Story of My Life by Helen Keller

In her autobiography, The Story of My Life , Helen Keller recounts her first twenty years, beginning with the events of the childhood illness that left her deaf and blind. In her childhood, a writer sent her a letter and prophesied, “Someday you will write a great story out of your own head that will be a comfort and help to many.”

In this book, Keller mentions prominent historical personalities, such as Alexander Graham Bell, whom she met at the age of six, and with whom she remained friends for several years. Keller paid a visit to John Greenleaf Whittier , a famous American poet, and shared correspondence with other eminent figures, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Mrs. Grover Cleveland. Generally, Keller’s autobiography is about overcoming great obstacles through hard work and pain.

Example #3:  Self Portraits: Fictions by Frederic Tuten

In his autobiography, “Self Portraits: Fictions ,” Frederic Tuten has combined the fringes of romantic life with reality. Like postmodern writers, such as Jorge Luis Borges, and Italo Calvino, the stories of Tuten skip between truth and imagination, time and place, without warning. He has done the same with his autobiography, where readers are eager to move through fanciful stories about train rides, circus bears, and secrets to a happy marriage; all of which give readers glimpses of the real man.

Example #4:  My Prizes by Thomas Bernhard

Reliving the success of his literary career through the lens of the many prizes he has received, Thomas Bernhard presents a sarcastic commentary in his autobiography, “My Prizes.” Bernhard, in fact, has taken a few things too seriously. Rather, he has viewed his life as a farcical theatrical drama unfolding around him. Although Bernhard is happy with the lifestyle and prestige of being an author, his blasé attitude and scathing wit make this recollection more charmingly dissident and hilarious.

Example #5:  The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin

“The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin ” is written by one of the founding fathers of the United States. This book reveals Franklin’s youth, his ideas, and his days of adversity and prosperity. He is one of the best examples of living the American dream – sharing the idea that one can gain financial independence, and reach a prosperous life through hard work.

Through autobiography, authors can speak directly to their readers, and to their descendants. The function of the autobiography is to leave a legacy for its readers. By writing an autobiography, the individual shares his triumphs and defeats, and lessons learned, allowing readers to relate and feel motivated by inspirational stories. Life stories bridge the gap between peoples of differing ages and backgrounds, forging connections between old and new generations.

Synonyms of Autobiography

The following words are close synonyms of autobiography such as life story, personal account, personal history, diary, journal, biography, or memoir.

Related posts:

  • The Autobiography of Malcolm X

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autobiography

What is autobiography definition, usage, and literary examples, autobiography definition.

An  autobiography  (awe-tow-bye-AWE-gruh-fee) is a self-written  biography . The author writes about all or a portion of their own life to share their experience, frame it in a larger cultural or historical context, and/or inform and entertain the reader.

Autobiographies have been a popular literary genre for centuries. The first Western autobiography is attributed to Saint Augustine of Hippo for his 13-book work titled  Confessions , written between 397 and 400 CE. Some autobiographies are a straightforward narrative that recollects a linear chain of events as they unfolded. The genre has expanded and evolved to include different approaches to the form.

The word  autobiography  comes from the Ancient Greek  auto  (“self”) +  bios  (“life”) +  graphein  (“to write”) = “a self-written life.” It is also known as autography .

The History of Autobiography

Scholars regard Augustine’s  Confessions  as the first Western autobiography. Other autobiographical works from antiquity include Jewish historian Flavius Josephus’s  Vita  (circa 99 CE) and Greek scholar Libanius’s  Oration I  (374 CE). Works of this kind were called apologias, which essentially means “in my defense.” Writers approached these works not as acts of self-documentation but as self-defense. They represented a way to explain and provide rationale for their life, work, and escapades. There was also less focus on their emotional lives.

The Book of Margery Kempe , written in 1438 by an English Christian mystic, is the earliest known autobiography in English. (Though it didn’t see full publication until the 20th century.) Other early English-language biographies of note include:

  • Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s 1764 memoirs
  • John Bunyan’s  Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners  in 1666
  • Jarena Lee’s  The Life and Religious Experience of Jarena Lee  (the first autobiography of an African American woman)

Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s  Confessions was published in 1782. It paved the way for the more thoughtful, emotionally centered autobiographies seen today. Autobiography as a literary genre emerged a few years later, when British scholar William Taylor first used the term to describe a self-written biography. He did so disparagingly, suggesting the form was  pedantic . In 1809, English Romantic poet Robert Southey used the term more seriously to describe self-written biographies.

Starting in the 20th century, more young people started writing autobiographies. Perhaps the most famous example is Anne Frank’s  The Diary of a Young Girl , about her time hiding from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic. The 21st century saw an increase in autobiographical essay collections and memoirs by younger celebrities, including:

  • Anna Kendrick
  • Mindy Kaling
  • Gabourey Sidibe
  • Mike Birbiglia
  • Lena Dunham
  • Chelsea Handler

Autobiographies are not immune to controversy. One notable scandal involved author James Frey’s  A Million Little Pieces . Originally billed as a memoir, evidence later emerged that Frey invented key parts of the story. This example underscores how easily authors can cross over into autofiction—fictional autobiography—and how seriously readers take authors’ responsibility to accurately and honestly market their books.

Types of Autobiographies

There are a few different types of self-written works that qualify as autobiography.

Standard Autobiographies

In the most traditional form, authors recount their life or specific formative events from their life. This approach often utilizes a chronological format of events, but it doesn’t necessarily have to. An author’s approach might include a framing device such as flashbacks, in which they move from the present to the past as they remember their lives. For example, Broadway star Patti LuPone’s self-titled autobiography begins on the opening night of  Gypsy  in 2004 before moving back in time to LuPone’s childhood. An author could take a more stream-of-consciousness style, in which one memory links to another by a common theme. Irish writer Seán O’Casey narrates his six-volume  Autobiographies  in this manner

This is a type of autobiography that is narrower in scope and focus. It places greater emphasis on particular memories, thoughts, and feelings. A standard autobiography can certainly cover some of this same ground—most do—but the memoir is more interested in individual events or defined portions of the author’s life and the emotions and lessons behind them.

Henry David Thoreau is a notable memoirist. In Walden , he reflects on his time spent living in solitude in the woods of Massachusetts and what he learned about life and nature throughout this experience. Another example is  The Year of Magical Thinking  by Joan Didion, which relates the death of her husband and its impact on her life and work. Another is  Wild  by Cheryl Strayed, wherein Strayed remembers her time hiking the Pacific Crest Trail during a period of great change in her life.

Autofiction

The fictionalized autobiography, or autofiction, is another type of autobiography. The author presents their story not as fact but as fiction. This method gives them considerable space to take creative license with events and characters, thereby blurring the lines between reality and fiction. The overall goal is less about the author wanting to obscure facts and make things up and more a matter of taking another tactic to delve into their experiences in service of self-discovery.  Taipei  by Tao Lin is a work of autofiction. The central character, Paul, mirrors Lin’s own life and experiences, from the literary world of New York City to his ancestral roots in Taiwan.

Spiritual Autobiographies

These autobiographies center on the author’s religious or spiritual awakening and the subsequent journey their faith has taken them on. Common elements include struggles and doubt, a life-altering conversion, periods of regression, and sharing the “message.” These all act as endorsements of the author’s faith. Augustine’s  Confessions , Paramahansa Yogananda’s  Autobiography of a Yogi , and Augusten Burroughs’s  Toil & Trouble: A Memoir  are all spiritual autobiographies.

Autobiography vs. Biography

Both autobiographies and  biographies  are records of real lives, but there is one major distinction. A person other than the book’s subject writes a biography, while the subject themselves writes an autobiography. In this way, an autobiography is essentially a biography of the self. The biographer’s job is typically more involved, entailing detailed research into the life of the subject. The autobiographer, however, is usually not burdened by this because they lived through the events they write about. They may need only to confirm dates and stories to accurately relate the pertinent details.

The Function of Autobiography

An autobiography allows the author to tell the true story of their own life. This is the reason why autobiographies have always been written by famous people. History tends to remember notable individuals for just one significant contribution or event and, even then, the public’s perception of it may be inaccurate. Writing an autobiography allows the author to share the real story and put it into the larger context of their life and times.

Most readers pick up an autobiography expecting some degree of subjectivity from the author. After all, the events chronicled happened to the author, so the writing will of course have a biased  perspective . There are advantages to this subjectivity, though. The reader gets the real story directly from the person who lived it, unvarnished by others’ opinions or erroneous historical data.

One way this subjectivity is problematic is that the author may not possess the ability to see the story they’re telling from other perspectives. For example, they may not acknowledge any hurt they caused others, dangerous behaviors they engaged in, or the “other side” of a controversial event in which there are equally valid opposing viewpoints and experiences. Any of these deficiencies can result in a somewhat skewed narrative.

Writers Known for Autobiography & Autobiography Books

  • Maya Angelou,  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings ,  Gather Together in My Name
  • Jung Chang,  Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
  • Isak Dinesen,  Out of Africa ,  Shadows on the Grass
  • Carrie Fisher,  Wishful Drinking ,  Shockaholic
  • Anne Frank,  The Diary of a Young Girl
  • Ernest Hemingway,  A Moveable Feast
  • Karl Ove Knausgård,  My Struggle
  • Frank McCourt,  Angela’s Ashes
  • Anaïs Nin,  The Diaries of Anaïs Nin
  • Marcel Proust,  Remembrance of Things Past
  • Patti Smith,  Just Kids ,  M Train
  • Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain
  • Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
  • Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
  • Agatha Christie, Agatha Christie: An Autobiography
  • Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
  • Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi: An Autobiography 

Examples of Autobiographies

1. Maya Angelou,  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Angelou’s autobiography is the first installment in a seven-volume series chronicling the life of the legendary poet, teacher, actress, director, dancer, and civil rights activist. Given all those roles, it’s easy to see why Angelou’s life story makes for interesting reading.

This volume centers primarily on her early life in Stamps, Arkansas, and the devastating effects of a childhood rape. It also explores racism in the American South. It discuses the important role reading plays in helping young Maya deal with the sexual assault and pervasive prejudice in her environment.

2. Helen Keller,  The Story of My Life

Keller’s autobiography details her first 20 years, starting with the childhood illness that caused her blindness and deafness. She discusses the obstacles she had to overcome and the life-changing relationship she shared with her teacher, Anne Sullivan, who helped her learn to read and write. Keller also documents her friendships with several famous figures of her day, including Alexander Graham Bell, John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and First Lady Frances Cleveland.

3. Vinh Chung,  Where the Wind Leads

Chung’s autobiography recalls the harrowing story of a Vietnamese refugee and his journey to make the American Dream his own. Born in South Vietnam, Chung comes of age in a changing political climate that eventually compels his family to flee the country. Their voyage takes them through the South China Sea, run-ins with pirates, resettlement in Arkansas, and Chung’s graduation from Harvard Medical School.

How to Write an Autobiography

Autobiography is a truly universal art form and is accessible to anyone, whether you're in high school or 100 years old. Exploring the process of writing an autobiography deserves an article in itself, but the process should include these steps:

  • Determine your "why." What lessons do you want to impart via your story, and why are they worth sharing with a broader audience?
  • Draft an autobiographical outline. It should include information about your upbringing, impactful moments throughout your life, stories of failure and success, and meaningful mentors.
  • Begin with the easiest sections. Getting started is often the greatest hurdle, so begin by writing the chapters that feel most accessible or enjoyable.
  • Write your first draft. Once you write the first chapters, it will feel easier to write the rest. Capitalize on your momentum and write a full draft.
  • Step away. As with anything, stepping away from your work will help foster fresh perspectives when you return.
  • Edit and re-write your draft. Your first draft will probably benefit from thorough revisions, as will your second draft, and maybe your third. Continue to edit and revise until it feels right.
  • Ask for help. Bring in a trusted family member or friend or professional editor to help with final edits.

Further Resources on Autobiography

ThoughtCo. shares some  important points to consider before writing an autobiography .

The Living Handbook of Narratology delves into the  history of the autobiography .

MasterClass breaks autobiography writing down into  eight basic steps .

Pen & the Pad looks at the  advantages and disadvantages of the autobiography .

Lifehack has a list of  15 autobiographies everyone should read at least once .

Related Terms

  • Frame Story
  • Point of View

characteristics of the autobiography genre

  • Literary Terms
  • Autobiography
  • Definition & Examples
  • When & How to Write Autobiography

I. What is Autobiography?

An autobiography is a self-written life story.

autobiography

It is different from a  biography , which is the life story of a person written by someone else. Some people may have their life story written by another person because they don’t believe they can write well, but they are still considered an author because they are providing the information. Reading autobiographies may be more interesting than biographies because you are reading the thoughts of the person instead of someone else’s interpretation.

II. Examples of Autobiography

One of the United States’ forefathers wrote prolifically (that means a lot!) about news, life, and common sense. His readings, quotes, and advice are still used today, and his face is on the $100 bill. Benjamin Franklin’s good advice is still used through his sayings, such as “We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.” He’s also the one who penned the saying that’s seen all over many schools: “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” His autobiography is full of his adventures , philosophy about life, and his wisdom. His autobiography shows us how much he valued education through his anecdotes (stories) of his constant attempts to learn and improve himself. He also covers his many ideas on his inventions and his thoughts as he worked with others in helping the United States become free from England.

III. Types of Autobiography

There are many types of autobiographies. Authors must decide what purpose they have for writing about their lives, and then they can choose the format that would best tell their story. Most of these types all share common goals: helping themselves face an issue by writing it down, helping others overcome similar events, or simply telling their story.

a. Full autobiography (traditional):

This would be the complete life story, starting from birth through childhood, young adulthood, and up to the present time at which the book is being written. Authors might choose this if their whole lives were very different from others and could be considered interesting.

There are many types of memoirs – place, time, philosophic (their theory on life), occupational, etc. A memoir is a snapshot of a person’s life. It focuses on one specific part that stands out as a learning experience or worth sharing.

c. Psychological illness

People who have suffered mental illness of any kind find it therapeutic to write down their thoughts. Therapists are specialists who listen to people’s problems and help them feel better, but many people find writing down their story is also helpful.

d. Confession

Just as people share a psychological illness, people who have done something very wrong may find it helps to write down and share their story. Sharing the story may make one feel he or she is making amends (making things right), or perhaps hopes that others will learn and avoid the same mistake.

e. Spiritual

Spiritual and religious experiences are very personal . However, many people feel that it’s their duty and honor to share these stories. They may hope to pull others into their beliefs or simply improve others’ lives.

f. Overcoming adversity

Unfortunately, many people do not have happy, shining lives. Terrible events such as robberies, assaults, kidnappings, murders, horrific accidents, and life-threatening illnesses are common in some lives. Sharing the story can inspire others while also helping the person express deep emotions to heal.

IV. The Importance of Autobiography

Autobiographies are an important part of history. Being able to read the person’s own ideas and life stories is getting the first-person story versus the third-person (he-said/she-said) version. In journalism, reporters go to the source to get an accurate account of an event. The same is true when it comes to life stories. Reading the story from a second or third source will not be as reliable. The writer may be incorrectly explaining and describing the person’s life events.

Autobiographies are also important because they allow other people in similar circumstances realize that they are not alone. They can be inspiring for those who are facing problems in their lives. For the author, writing the autobiography allows them to heal as they express their feelings and opinions. Autobiographies are also an important part of history.

V. Examples of Autobiography in Literature

A popular autobiography that has lasted almost 100 years is that of Helen Keller. Her life story has been made into numerous movies and plays. Her teacher, Anne Sullivan, has also had her life story written and televised multiple times. Students today still read and learn about this young girl who went blind and deaf at 19 months of age, causing her to also lose her ability to learn to speak. Sullivan’s entrance into Helen’s life when the girl was seven was the turning point. She learned braille and soon became an activist for helping blind and deaf people across the nation. She died in 1968, but her autobiography is still helping others.

Even in the days before my teacher came, I used to feel along the square stiff boxwood hedges, and, guided by the sense of smell, would find the first violets and lilies. There, too, after a fit of temper, I went to find comfort and to hide my hot face in the cool leaves and grass. What joy it was to lose myself in that garden of flowers, to wander happily from spot to spot, until, coming suddenly upon a beautiful vine, I recognized it by its leaves and blossoms, and knew it was the vine which covered the tumble-down summer-house at the farther end of the garden! (Keller).

An autobiography that many middle and high school students read every year is “Night” by Elie Wiesel. His story is also a memoir, covering his teen years as he and his family went from the comfort of their own home to being forced into a Jewish ghetto with other families, before ending up in a Nazi prison camp. His book is not that long, but the details and description he uses brings to life the horrors of Hitler’s reign of terror in Germany during World War II. Students also read “The Diary of Anne Frank,” another type of autobiography that shows a young Jewish girl’s daily life while hiding from the Nazis to her eventual capture and death in a German camp. Both books are meant to remind us to not be indifferent to the world’s suffering and to not allow hate to take over.

“The people were saying, “The Red Army is advancing with giant strides…Hitler will not be able to harm us, even if he wants to…” Yes, we even doubted his resolve to exterminate us. Annihilate an entire people? Wipe out a population dispersed throughout so many nations? So many millions of people! By what means? In the middle of the twentieth century! And thus my elders concerned themselves with all manner of things—strategy, diplomacy, politics, and Zionism—but not with their own fate. Even Moishe the Beadle had fallen silent. He was weary of talking. He would drift through synagogue or through the streets, hunched over, eyes cast down, avoiding people’s gaze. In those days it was still possible to buy emigration certificates to Palestine. I had asked my father to sell everything, to liquidate everything, and to leave” (Wiesel 8).  

VI. Examples of Autobiography in Pop Culture

One example of an autobiography that was a hit in the movie theaters is “American Sniper,” the story of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. According to an article in the Dallas, Texas, magazine D, Kyle donated all the proceeds from the film to veterans and their families. He had a story to tell, and he used it to help others. His story is a memoir, focusing on a specific time period of his life when he was overseas in the military.

An autobiography by a young Olympian is “Grace, Gold and Glory: My Leap of Faith” by Gabrielle (Gabby) Douglas. She had a writer, Michelle Burford, help her in writing her autobiography. This is common for those who have a story to tell but may not have the words to express it well. Gabby was the darling of the 2012 Olympics, winning gold medals for the U.S. in gymnastics along with being the All-Around Gold Medal winner, the first African-American to do so. Many young athletes see her as an inspiration. Her story also became a television movie, “The Gabby Douglas Story.”

VII. Related Terms

The life story of one person written by another. The purpose may to be highlight an event or person in a way to help the public learn a lesson, feel inspired, or to realize that they are not alone in their circumstance. Biographies are also a way to share history. Historic and famous people may have their biographies written by many authors who research their lives years after they have died.

VIII. Conclusion

Autobiographies are a way for people to share stories that may educate, inform, persuade, or inspire others. Many people find writing their stories to be therapeutic, healing them beyond what any counseling might do or as a part of the counseling. Autobiographies are also a way to keep history alive by allowing people in the present learn about those who lived in the past. In the future, people can learn a lot about our present culture by reading autobiographies by people of today.

List of Terms

  • Alliteration
  • Amplification
  • Anachronism
  • Anthropomorphism
  • Antonomasia
  • APA Citation
  • Aposiopesis
  • Bildungsroman
  • Characterization
  • Circumlocution
  • Cliffhanger
  • Comic Relief
  • Connotation
  • Deus ex machina
  • Deuteragonist
  • Doppelganger
  • Double Entendre
  • Dramatic irony
  • Equivocation
  • Extended Metaphor
  • Figures of Speech
  • Flash-forward
  • Foreshadowing
  • Intertextuality
  • Juxtaposition
  • Literary Device
  • Malapropism
  • Onomatopoeia
  • Parallelism
  • Pathetic Fallacy
  • Personification
  • Point of View
  • Polysyndeton
  • Protagonist
  • Red Herring
  • Rhetorical Device
  • Rhetorical Question
  • Science Fiction
  • Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
  • Synesthesia
  • Turning Point
  • Understatement
  • Urban Legend
  • Verisimilitude
  • Essay Guide
  • Cite This Website

Autobiography: Book Genre Explained

An autobiography is a self-written account of one’s life. It is a non-fiction genre that presents a detailed chronicle of the author’s personal experiences and life events. This genre of literature offers a deep dive into the life of the author, providing readers with a unique perspective on the author’s personal journey, their thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

Autobiographies are often written by famous or influential individuals, providing a firsthand account of their life, achievements, struggles, and insights. However, it’s not limited to the famous; anyone with a compelling story to tell can pen an autobiography. The genre has evolved over the years, with various sub-genres and formats emerging, each offering a different approach to the autobiographical narrative.

History of Autobiographies

The concept of recording one’s own life story dates back to ancient times, with examples found in various cultures worldwide. However, the term “autobiography” was first used in the late 18th century. The genre gained popularity in the 20th century, with many notable figures from various fields sharing their life stories.

One of the earliest known autobiographies is “ The Confessions ” by Saint Augustine, written in the 4th century AD. The genre continued to evolve over the centuries, with notable works such as “ The Life of Benvenuto Cellini ” in the 16th century, and “ The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin ” in the 18th century.

Modern Autobiographies

In the 20th and 21st centuries, the genre has seen a surge in popularity, with many famous personalities from various fields, including politics, entertainment, sports, and literature, penning their life stories. These modern autobiographies often focus on specific aspects of the author’s life, such as their career, personal struggles, or significant life events.

Some notable modern autobiographies include “ The Diary of a Young Girl ” by Anne Frank, “ Long Walk to Freedom ” by Nelson Mandela, and “ I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings ” by Maya Angelou. These works have had a significant impact on society, shedding light on various social, cultural, and political issues.

Characteristics of Autobiographies

Autobiographies have several distinct characteristics that set them apart from other genres. The most obvious is that they are written by the person whose life story is being told. This provides a unique, firsthand perspective on the events and experiences described.

Autobiographies are typically written in the first person, using “I” statements. This allows the author to share their thoughts, feelings, and experiences directly with the reader. They often include personal reflections and insights, providing a deeper understanding of the author’s life and personality.

Chronological Order

Most autobiographies are written in chronological order, starting with the author’s birth or early childhood and progressing through their life. This allows the reader to follow the author’s life journey, understanding how their experiences and decisions have shaped them into the person they are today.

However, some autobiographies may deviate from this structure, focusing on specific periods or events in the author’s life. These works may jump back and forth in time, providing a more thematic or episodic approach to the life story.

Truth and Accuracy

Autobiographies are expected to be truthful and accurate, as they are a record of the author’s life. However, they are also subjective, as they are written from the author’s perspective. This can lead to differences in interpretation and memory, and the author may choose to omit or emphasize certain events.

Despite these potential biases, autobiographies are often used as historical documents, providing valuable insights into the author’s time and place. They can offer a unique perspective on historical events, social conditions, and cultural norms.

Types of Autobiographies

While the traditional autobiography is a comprehensive account of the author’s life, there are several sub-genres and formats that offer different approaches to the autobiographical narrative. These include memoirs, diaries, and letters, each with its own unique characteristics and focus.

These sub-genres allow authors to explore specific aspects of their life, such as their career, personal struggles, or significant life events. They can also provide a more intimate and personal perspective, focusing on the author’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

A memoir is a sub-genre of autobiography that focuses on specific aspects or periods of the author’s life. Unlike a traditional autobiography, which covers the author’s entire life, a memoir often focuses on a particular theme or event. This allows the author to delve deeper into specific experiences, providing a more detailed and intimate account.

Some notable memoirs include “ Eat, Pray, Love ” by Elizabeth Gilbert, “ Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail ” by Cheryl Strayed, and “ The Glass Castle ” by Jeannette Walls. These works provide a deep dive into the author’s personal experiences, offering insights into their thoughts, feelings, and personal growth.

Diaries and Letters

Diaries and letters can also serve as autobiographical works, providing a firsthand account of the author’s daily life and experiences. These works often offer a more immediate and intimate perspective, as they are written in the moment, without the benefit of hindsight.

Some famous diaries and collections of letters that serve as autobiographies include “ The Diary of a Young Girl ” by Anne Frank, “ The Journals of Sylvia Plath “, and “ The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh “. These works provide a unique window into the author’s life, thoughts, and feelings at a particular point in time.

Impact of Autobiographies

Autobiographies have a significant impact on both literature and society. They provide a unique perspective on the author’s life and times, offering insights into their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. They can also shed light on historical events, social conditions, and cultural norms.

Through their personal narratives, autobiographies can inspire, educate, and provoke thought. They can provide a deeper understanding of the human experience, fostering empathy and understanding. They can also serve as a source of inspiration, showing how individuals can overcome obstacles and achieve their goals.

Social and Cultural Impact

Autobiographies can have a profound social and cultural impact. They can shed light on social issues, cultural norms, and historical events, providing a firsthand account of the author’s experiences. This can help to raise awareness and understanding of these issues, fostering empathy and social change.

For example, “ I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings ” by Maya Angelou sheds light on the experiences of African American women in the mid-20th century, while “ Long Walk to Freedom ” by Nelson Mandela provides a firsthand account of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. These works have had a significant impact on society, contributing to social and cultural understanding and change.

Influence on Literature

Autobiographies have also had a significant influence on literature. They have contributed to the development of the non-fiction genre, providing a unique form of narrative that combines personal reflection with historical documentation. They have also influenced other genres, such as biography and fiction, through their focus on personal narrative and character development.

Autobiographies have also inspired many authors, providing a model for exploring personal experiences and emotions. They have influenced the development of literary techniques, such as stream of consciousness and introspective narration, which have been adopted by many authors in their works.

Writing an Autobiography

Writing an autobiography can be a rewarding and enlightening experience. It provides an opportunity to reflect on one’s life, explore personal experiences and emotions, and share insights and lessons learned. However, it can also be a challenging task, requiring careful planning, reflection, and writing skills.

When writing an autobiography, it’s important to be honest and authentic, sharing your experiences and emotions in a way that is true to your experience. It’s also important to consider your audience and purpose, as this can influence the structure and content of your work.

Planning and Structure

Before starting to write, it’s important to plan your autobiography. This involves deciding on the scope of your work, identifying the key events and experiences you want to include, and determining the structure of your narrative. This can help to ensure that your work is coherent and engaging, and that it effectively communicates your life story.

Most autobiographies are structured chronologically, starting with the author’s birth or early childhood and progressing through their life. However, you may choose to structure your work differently, focusing on specific periods or events, or using a thematic or episodic approach. The structure should serve your narrative and help to convey your life story in an engaging and meaningful way.

Writing and Revision

Once you have planned your autobiography, you can start writing. It’s important to write in a clear and engaging style, using vivid descriptions and personal reflections to bring your story to life. You should also strive to be honest and authentic, sharing your experiences and emotions in a way that is true to your experience.

After writing your autobiography, it’s important to revise and edit your work. This involves checking for errors, clarifying unclear passages, and improving the flow and coherence of your narrative. This can help to ensure that your work is clear, engaging, and effective in communicating your life story.

In conclusion, the autobiography is a unique and powerful genre of literature that provides a firsthand account of the author’s life. It offers a deep dive into the author’s personal experiences and emotions, providing insights into their thoughts, feelings, and life journey. It also serves as a historical document, providing a unique perspective on the author’s time and place.

Whether written by famous personalities or ordinary individuals, autobiographies have a significant impact on both literature and society. They inspire, educate, and provoke thought, fostering empathy and understanding. They also contribute to the development of literature, influencing other genres and inspiring authors. Writing an autobiography can be a rewarding and enlightening experience, providing an opportunity to reflect on one’s life and share insights and lessons learned.

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Autobiography

Notoriously difficult to define, autobiography in the broader sense of the word is used almost synonymously with “life writing” and denotes all modes and genres of telling one’s own life. More specifically, autobiography as a literary genre signifies a retrospective narrative that undertakes to tell the author’s own life, or a substantial part of it, seeking (at least in its classic version) to reconstruct his/her personal development within a given historical, social and cultural framework. While autobiography on the one hand claims to be non-fictional (factual) in that it proposes to tell the story of a ‘real’ person, it is inevitably constructive, or imaginative, in nature and as a form of textual ‘self-fashioning’ ultimately resists a clear distinction from its fictional relatives (autofiction, autobiographical novel), leaving the generic borderlines blurred.

Explication

Emerging from the European Enlightenment, with precursors in antiquity, autobiography in its ‘classic’ shape is characterized by autodiegetic, i.e. 1st-person subsequent narration told from the point of view of the present. Comprehensive and continuous retrospection, based on memory, makes up its governing structural and semantic principle. Oscillating between the struggle for truthfulness and creativity, between oblivion, concealment, hypocrisy, self-deception and self-conscious fictionalizing, autobiography renders a story of personality formation, a Bildungsgeschichte . As such, it was epitomized by Rousseau ( [1782–89] 1957 ); Goethe ( [1808–31] 1932 ) and continued throughout the 19th century and beyond (Chateaubriand [1848/50] 2002 ; Mill [1873]1989 , with examples of autobiographical fiction in Moritz ( [1785–86] 2006 ), Dickens ( [1850] 2008 ), Keller ( [1854–55] 1981 ; a second, autodiegetic version [1879–80] 1985 ) and Proust ( [1913–27] 1988 ). While frequently disclaiming to follow generic norms, its hallmark is a focus on psychological introspection and a sense of historicity, frequently implying, in the instance of a writer’s autobiography, a close link between the author’s life and literary work.

Although 1st-person narrative continues to be the dominant form in autobiography, there are examples of autobiographical writing told in the 3rd person (e.g. Stein 1933 ; Wolf 1976 ), in epistolary form (e.g. Plato’s Seventh Letter ca. 353 B.C. [1966] ) and in verse (Wordsworth [1799, 1805, 1850] 1979 ). However, with its ‘grand narrative’ of identity, the classic 1st-person form of autobiography has continued to provide the generic model around which new autobiographical forms of writing and new conceptions of autobiographical selves have taken shape. At the heart of its narrative logic lies the duality of the autobiographical person, divided into ‘narrating I’ and ‘narrated I’, marking the distance between the experiencing and the narrating subject. Whereas the ‘narrated I’ features as the protagonist, the ‘narrating I’, i.e. the 1st-person narrator, ultimately personifies the agent of focalization, the overall position from which the story is rendered, although the autobiographical narrator may temporarily step back to adopt an earlier perspective. A pseudo-static present point of narration as the ultimate end of autobiographical writing is thus implied, rendering the trajectory of autobiographical narrative circular, as it were: the present is both the end and the condition of its narration. However, this apparent circularity is frequently destabilized by the dynamics of the narrative present, as the autobiographer continues to live while composing his/her narrative, thus leaving the perspective open to change unless the position of ‘quasi death’ is adopted, as in Hume’s notoriously stoic presentation of himself as a person of the past (Hume 1778 ). At the other end of the spectrum of self-positionings as autobiographical narrator, Wordsworth testifies to the impossibility of autobiographical closure in his verse autobiography ( [1799, 1805, 1850] 1979 ). Again and again, he rewrites the same time span of his life. As his life continues to progress, his subject—the “growth of a poet’s mind” ( [1850, subtitle] 1979 )—perpetually appears to him in a new light, requiring continual revision even though the ‘duration’ (the time span covered) in fact remains the same, thus reflecting the instability of the autobiographical subject as narrator. Accordingly, the later narrative versions bear the mark of the different stages of writing. The narrative present, then, can only ever be a temporary point of view, affording an “interim balance” (de Bruyn [1992] 1994 ) at best, leaving the final vantage point an autobiographical illusion.

With its dual structural core, the autobiographical 1st-person pronoun may be said to reflect the precarious intersections and balances of the “idem” and “ipse” dimensions of personal identity pertaining to spatio-temporal sameness and selfhood as agency (Ricœur 1991 ). In alternative theoretical terms, it may be related to “three identity dilemmas”: “sameness […] across time,” being “unique” in the face of others; and “agency” (Bamberg 2011 : 6–8; Bamberg → Identity and Narration ). In a more radical, deconstructive twist of theorizing autobiographical narrative in relation to the issue ofidentity, the 1st-person dualism inherent in autobiography appears as a ‘writing the self’ by another, as a mode of “ghostwriting” (Volkening 2006 : 7).

Beyond this pivotal feature of 1st-person duality, further facets of the 1st-person pronoun of autobiography come into play. Behind the narrator, the empirical writing subject, the “Real” or “Historical I” is located, not always in tune with the ‘narrating’ and ‘experiencing I’s’, but considered the ‘real author’ and the external subject of reference. The concept of the “ideological I” suggested by Smith and Watson (eds. 2001 ) is a more precarious one. It is conceived as an abstract category which, unlike its narrative siblings, is not manifest on the textual level, but in ‘covert operation’ only. According to Smith and Watson, it signifies “the concept of personhood culturally available to the narrator when he tells the story” (eds. 2001 : 59–61) and thus reflects the social (and intertextual) embedding of any autobiographical narrative. Reconsidered from the viewpoint of social sciences and cognitive narratology alike, the ‘ideological I’ derives from culturally available generic and insti­tutional genres, structures and institutions of self-representation. Depending on the diverse (inter-)disciplinary approaches to the social nature of the autobiographical self, these are variously termed “master narrative,” “patterns of emplotment,” “schema,” “frame,” cognitive “script” (e.g. Neumann et al. eds. 2008 ), or even “biography generator” ( Biographie­generatoren , Hahn 1987 : 12). What ties this heterogeneous terminology together is the basic assumption that only through an engagement with such socially/culturally prefigured models, their reinscription, can individuals represent themselves as subjects.

The social dimension of autobiography also comes into play on an intratextual level in so far as any act of autobiographical communication addresses another—explicitly so in terms of constructing a narratee, who may be part of the self, a “Nobody,” an individual person, the public, or God as supreme Judge.

At the same time, autobiography stages the self in relation to others on the level of narrative. Apart from personal models or important figures in one’s life story, autobiographies may be centred on a relationship of self and other to an extent that effectively erases the boundaries between auto- and heterobiography (e.g. Gosse [1907] 2004 ; Steedman 1987 ). In such cases, the (auto)biographical “routing of a self known through its relational others” is openly displayed, undermining the model “of life narrative as a bounded story of the unique, individuated narrating subject” (Smith & Watson eds. 2001 : 67). With its several dimensions of social ‘relatedness’, then, autobiographical writing is never an autonomous act of self-reflection, as sociological theorists of (auto-)biography have long argued (e.g. Kohli 1981 : 505–16). From a sociological angle, it may be considered a form of social action making sense of personal experience in terms of general relevance (Sloterdijk 1978 : 21). Autobiographical patterns of relevance are culturally specific, diverse and subject to historical change, as the history of autobiography with its multitude of forms and writing practices demonstrates.

Autobiography in Historical Perspective

Whereas its origins ultimately date back to antiquity (Roesler 2005 ), with Augustine’s Confessions ( [398–98] 1961 ) as a prominent ancient landmark, the history of autobiography as a (factual) literary genre and critical term is a much shorter one. In German, the term Selbstbiographie first featured in the collective volume Selbstbiographien berühmter Männer ( 1796 ) [Self-Biographies by Famous Men], its editor Seybold claiming Herder as source. Jean Paul called his unfinished and unpublished autobiography Selberlebens­beschrei­bung [‘description of one’s life by oneself’] ( [1818­–19] 1987 : 16). In English, D’Israeli spoke of “self-biography” in 1796 (95–110), while his critic Taylor suggested “auto-biography” (Nussbaum 1989 : 1). These neologisms reflect a concern with a mode of writing only just considered to be a distinct species of (factual) literature at the time; not until the mid-18th century did autobiography separate from historiography as well as from a general notion of biography. The latter, variously coined ‘life’, ‘memoir’ or ‘history’, had not distinguished between what Johnson then seminally parted as “telling his own story” as opposed to “recounting the life of another” ( [1750] 1969 and [1759] 1963 ).

The emergence of autobiography as a literary genre and critical term thus coincides with what has frequently been called the emergence of the modern subject around 1800. It evolved as a genre of non-fictional, yet ‘constructed’ autodiegetic narration wherein a self-reflective subject enquires into his/her identity and its developmental trajectory. The autobiographer looks back to tell the story of his/her life from the beginning to the present, tracing the story of its own making—in Nietzsche’s words, “How One Bec[ame] What One Is” ( [1908] 1992 ). As it tends to focus on the autobiographical subject as singular individual, auto­biography in the modern sense is thus marked by the secularization and the “temporalization ( Historisierung) of experience” (Burke 2011 : 13). In contrast, pre-modern spiritual autobiography, which followed the tradition of Augustine’s Confessions and continued well into the 19th century, constructed its subject as exemplum, i.e. as a typical story to be learnt from. Little emphasis was put on life-world particularities (although these tended to acquire their own popular dynamics as in crime confessions ). Dividing life into clear-cut phases centred round the moment of conversion, the spiritual autobiographer tells the story of self-renunciation and surrenders to providence and grace (e.g. Bunyan [1666] 1962 ). Its narrative becomes possible only after the key experience of conversion, yielding up a ‘new self’. Accordingly, Augustine commented on his former self with great detachment: “But this was the man I was” ( [387–98] 1961 : 105). While on the level of story, then, the division in spiritual autobiographies is one of ‘before’ and ‘after’, the level of narrative being ruled by the perspective of ‘after’ almost exclusively: only after and governed by the experience of conversion to Christian belief can the story be told at all. The moment of anagnōrisis and narrative present do not coincide.

The narrative mode of modern autobiography as a literary genre, firmly linked to the notion of the individual, evolved to some extent by propelling the moment of self-recognition towards the narrative present: only at the end of one’s story can it be unfurled from the beginning as a singular life course, staging the autobiographer as subject. The secular self accounts for itself as autonomous agent, (ideally) in charge of itself. This is the narrative logic of autobiography in its ‘classic shape’ that also informed the autobiographical novel. By 1800, the task of autobiography was to represent a unique individual, as claimed by Rousseau for himself: “I am not made like any of those I have seen; I venture to believe that I am not like any of those who are in existence” ( [1782] 1957 : 1). Most prominently, Goethe explicitly writes of himself as a singular individual embedded in and interacting with the specific constellations of his time ( [1808–31] 1932 ). Autobiography thus focuses on the life of a singular individual within its specific historical context, retracing the “genetic personality de­ve­lop­ment founded in the awareness of a complex in­terplay bet­ween I-and-my-world” (Weintraub 1982 : 13). In this sense, it may be seen to represent the “full convergence of all the factors constituting this modern view of the self” (XV). Its central figure is that of a Romantic self-constitution, grounded in memory.

As memory informs autobiography, self-consciously reflected upon since Augustine (Book XX, Confessions ), the boundaries between fact and fiction are inevitably straddled, as Goethe’s title Dichtung und Wahrheit ( Poetry and Truth ) ( [1808–31] 1932 ) aptly suggests. In the face of the inevitable subjectivity (or fallibility) of autobiographical recollection, the creative dimension of memory, and thus autobiography’s quality as verbal/aesthetic fabrication, has come to the fore. In this respect, the history of autobiography as a literary genre is closely interrelated with corresponding forms of autofiction/the autobiographical novel, with no clear dividing lines, even though autobiographical fiction tends to leave “signposts” of its fictionality to be picked up by the reader (Cohn 1999 ). In any case, autobiography’s temporal linearity and narrative coherence has frequently proved prone to deliberate anachronisms and disruptions—programmatically so in Nabokov ( 1966 ). Indeed, by the early 20th century there was an increasing scepticism about the possibility of a cohesive self emerging through autobiographical memory. Modernist writers experimented with fragmentation, subverting chronology and splitting the subject (Woolf 1985 , published posthumously; Stein 1933 ), foregrounding visual and scenic/topographical components, highlighting the role of language (Sartre [1964] 2002 ), conflating auto- and heterobiography or transforming lives into fiction (e.g. Proust [1913–27] 1988 ).

Critical Paradigms in Historical Perspective

From its critical beginnings, then, autobiography has been inextricably linked to the critical history of subjectivity. In his monumental study of 1907, Misch explicitly surveyed the history of autobiography as a reflection of the trajectory of forms of subjective consciousness ( [1907] 1950 : 4). He thus acknowledged the historical specificity of forms of autobiographical self-reflection. With his concept of autobiography as “a special genre in literature” and at the same time “an original interpretation of experience” (3–4), Misch aligned with the hermeneutics of Dilthey, who considered autobiography the supreme form of the “understanding of life.” Such understanding involves selection as the autobiographical self takes from the infinite moments of experience those elements that, in retrospect, appear relevant with respect to the entire life course. The past is endowed with meaning in the light of the present. Understanding, according to Dilthey, also involves fitting the individual parts into a whole, ascribing interconnection and causality ( [1910] 2002 : 221–22). Autobiography thus constructs an individual life course as a coherent, meaningful whole. Even if autobiography’s aspect of re-living experience, of rendering incidents as they were experienced at the time, is taken into account, the superior ‘interpreting’ position of the narrative present remains paramount, turning past events into a meaningful plot, making sense ( Sinn ) of contingency.

Hermeneutics continued to dominate the theory of autobiography, lagging behind its poetic practices. Gusdorf defined autobiography as “a kind of apologetics or theodicy of the indivi­dual being” ( 1980 : 39), yet shifted the emphasis somewhat by prioritizing its literary over its historical function. Anglo-American theories of autobiography similarly tended to focus on such a poetical norm of autobiography as a literary work devoted to “inner truth” (Pascal 1960 ), with Rousseau’s/Goethe’s autobiography as the recognizable generic model. “Any auto­biography that resembles modern auto­biographies in structure and content is the modern kind of au­to­biography”; these are “works like those that modern readers in­stinctively expect to find when they see Autobiography , My Life , or Memoirs printed across the back of a volume” (Shumaker 1954 : 5). Whether hermeneutics- or New Criticism-inspired, the history of autobiography as“art” (Niggl 1988 : 6) is seen to culminate around 1800, while its more immediate forerunners are often located in the Renaissance or earlier (e.g. Petrarch [1326] 2005 ; Cellini [1558–66] 1995 ). With regard to the primary role of the autobiographer as subject of his work, Starobinski argued that his/her singularity was articulated by way of idiosyncratic style ( 1970 , [1970] 1983 ).

Only in the wake of the various social, cultural and linguistic turns of literary and cultural theory since the 1970s did autobiography lose this normative frame. Relying on Freud and Riesman, Neumann established a social psychology - based typology of autobiographical forms. Aligning different modes of narrative with different conceptions of identity, he distinguished between the external orientation of res gestae and memoir, representing the individual as social type, on the one hand, as opposed to autobiography with its focus on memory and identity ( 1970 : esp. 25), on the other hand. Only autobiography aims at personal identity whereas the memoir is concerned with affirming the autobiographer’s place in the world.

More recent research has elaborated on the issue of autobiographical narrative and identity in psychological terms (Bruner 1993 ) as well as from interdisciplinary angles, probing the inevitability of narrative as constitutive of personal identity (e.g. Eakin 2008 ) in the wake of “the twin crisis of identity and narrative in the twentieth century” (Klepper 2013 : 2) and exploring forms of non-linearity, intermediality or life writing in the new media (Dünne & Moser 2008 ). The field of life writing as narratives of self—or of various forms of self—has thus become significantly broader, transcending the classic model of autobiographical identity qua coherent retrospective narrative. Yet whatever its theoretical remodelling and practical rewritings, even if frequently subverted in practice, the close nexus between narrative, self/identity, and the genre/practice of autobiography continues to be considered paramount. The underlying assumption concerning autobiography is that of a close, even inextricable connection between narrative and identity, with autobiography the prime generic site of enactment. Moreover, life narrative has even been promoted in modernity to a “general cultural pattern of knowledge” (Braun & Stiegler eds. 2012 : 13). (While these approaches tend to address autobiographical writing practices claiming to be or considered non-fictional, their relevance extends to autofictional forms.)

Next to narrative and identity, the role of memory in (autobiographical) self-constructions has been addressed (Olney 1998 ), in particular adopting cognitivist (e.g. Erll et al., eds. 2003 ) and psychoanalytical (Pietzcker 2005 ) angles as well as elaborating the neurobiological foundations of autobiographical memory (Markowitsch & Welzer 2005 ). From the perspective of ‘natural’ narratology, the experiential aspect of autobiography, its dimension of re-living and reconstructing experience, has been emphasized (Löschnigg 2010 : 259).

With memory being both a constitutive faculty and a creative liability, the nature of the autobiogra­phical subject has also been revised in terms of psychoanalytical, (socio‑) psychological or even deconstructive cate­gories (e.g. Holdenried 1991 ; Volkening 2006 ). ‘Classic autobiography’ has turned out to be a limited historical phenomenon whose foundations and principles have been increasingly challenged and subverted with respect to poetic practice, poetological reflection and genre theory alike. Even within a less radical theoretical frame, chronological linearity, retrospective narrative closure and coherence as mandatory generic markers have been dis­qualified, or at least re-conceptualized as structural tools (e.g. Kronsbein 1984 ). Autobiography’s generic scope now includes such forms as the diary/journal as “serial autobiography” (Fothergill 1974 : 152), the “Literary Self-Portrait” as a more heterogeneous and complex literary type (Beaujour [1980] 1991 ) and the essay (e.g. Hof & Rohr eds. 2008 ). While autobiography has thus gained in formal and thematic diversity, autobiographical identity appears a transitory phenomenon at best. In its most radical deconstructive twist, autobiography is reconceptionalized as a rhetorical figure—“prosopopeia”—that ultimately produces “the illu­sion of reference” (de Man 1984 : 81). De Man thus challenges the very foundations of autobiography in that it is said to create its subject by means of rhetorical language rather than represent the subject. Autobiography operates in complicity with metaphysical notions of self-consciousness, intentionality and language as a means of representation.

Whereas de Man’s deconstruction of autobiography turned out to be of little lasting impact, Lejeune’s theory of the “autobiographical pact” has proven seminal. It rethinks autobiography as an institutionalized communicative act where author and reader enter into a particular ‘contract’—the “autobiographical pact”—sealed by the triple reference of the same proper name. “Autobiography (narrative recounting the life of the author) supposes that there is identity of name between the author (such as s/he figures, by name, on the cover), the narrator of the story and the character who is being talked about” ( [1987] 1988 : 12; see Genette [1991] 1993 ) . The author’s proper name refers to a singular autobiogra­phical identity, identifying author, narrator and protagonist as one, and thus ensures the reading as autobiography. “The autobiographical pact is the affirmation in the text of this identity, referring back in the final analysis to the name of the author on the cover” (14). The tagging of the generic status operates by way of paratextual pronouncements or by identity of names; in contrast, nominal differentiation or content clues might point to fiction as worked out by Cohn ( 1999 ).

While Lejeune’s approach reduces the issue of fiction vs non-fiction to a simple matter of pragmatics, he acknowledges its own historical limitations set by the “author function” (Foucault [1969] 1979 ) along with its inextricable ties to the middle-class subject. As an ideal type, Lejeune’s autobiographical pact depends on the emergence of the modern author in the long 18th century as proprietor of his or her own text, guaranteed by modern copyright and marked by the title page/the imprint. In this sense, the history of modern autobiography as literary genre is closely connected to the history of authorship and the modern subject and vice versa, much as the scholarship on autobiography has emerged contemporaneously with the emergence of the modern author (Schönert → Author ).

In various ways, then, autobiography has proved prone to be to “slip[ping] away altogether,” failing to be identifiable by “its own proper form, terminology, and observances” (Olney ed. 1980 : 4). Some critics have even pondered the “end of autobiography” (e.g. Finck 1999 : 11). With critical hindsight, the classic paradigm of autobiography, with its tenets of coherence, circular closure, interiority, etc., is exposed as a historically limited, gendered and socially exclusive phenomenon (and certainly one that erases any clear dividing line between factual and fictional self-writings).

As its classic markers were rendered historically obsolete or ideologically suspicious (Nussbaum 1989 ), the pivotal role of class (Sloterdijk 1978 ), and especially gender, as intersectional identity markers within specific historical contexts came to be highlighted, opening innovative critical perspectives on strategies of subject formation in ‘canonical’ texts as well as broadening the field of autobiography studies. While ‘gender sensitive’ studies initially sought to reconstruct a specific female canon, they addressed the issue of a distinct female voice of/in autobiography as more “multidimensional, fragmented” (Jelinek ed. 1986 : viii), or subsequently undertook to explore autobiographical selves in terms of discursive self-positionings instead (Nussbaum 1989 ; Finck 1999 : esp. 291–93), tying in with discourse analytical redefinitions of autobiography as a discursive regime of (self-)discipline and regulation that evolved out of changes in communication media and technologies of memory during the 17th and 18th centuries (Schneider 1986 ). Subsequently, issues of publication, canonization and the historical nexus of gender and (autobiographical) genre became subjects of investigation, bringing into view historical notions of gender and the specific conditions and practices of communication within their generic and pragmatic contexts (e.g. Hof & Rohr eds. 2008 ). The history of autobiography has come to be more diverse and multi-facetted: thus alternative ‘horizontal’ modes of self, where identity is based on its contextual embedding by way of diarial modes, have come to the fore. With respect to texts by 17th-century autobiographers, the notion of “heterologous subjectivity”— self-writing via writing about another or others—has been suggested (Kormann 2004 : 5–6).

If gender studies exposed autobiography’s individualist self as a phenomenon of male self-fashioning, postcolonial theory further challenged its universal validity. While autobiography was long considered an exclusively Western genre, postcolonial approaches to autobiography/ life writing have significantly expanded the corpus of autobiographical writings and provided a perspective which is critical of both the eurocentrism of autobiography genre theory and the concepts of selfhood in operation (e.g. Lionett 1991 ). In this context, too, the question has arisen as to how autobiography is possible for those who have no voice of their own, who cannot speak for themselves (see Spivak’s ‘subaltern’). Such ‘Writing ordinary lives’, usually aiming at collective identities, poses specific problems: sociological, ethical and even aesthetic (see Pandian 2008 ).

Following the spatial turn, the concept of ‘eco-autobiography’ also carries potentially wider theoretical significance. By “mapping the self” (Regard ed. 2003 ), eco-biography designates a specific mode of autobiography that constructs a “relationship between the natural setting and the self,” often aiming at “discover[ing] ‘a new self in nature’” (Perreten 2003 ), with Wordsworth or Thoreau ( [1854] 1948 ) as frequently cited paradigms. Phrased in less Romantic terms, it locates life courses and self-representations in specific places. In a wider sense, eco- or topographical autobiographies undertake to place the autobiographical subject in terms of spatial or topographical figurations, bringing into play space/topography as a pivotal moment of biographical identity and thus potentially disturbing autobiography’s anchorage in time. In any case, the prioritizing of space over time seems to question, if not to reverse, the dominance of temporality in autobiography and beyond since 1800.

Whatever the markers of difference and semantic foci explored, the notion of autobiography has shifted from literary genre to a broad range of cultural practices that draw on and incorporate a multitude of textual modes and genres. By 2001, Smith and Watson (eds. 2001 ) were able to list fifty-two “Genres of Life Narrative” by combining formal and semantic features. Among them are narratives of migration, immigration or exile, narratives engaging with ethnic identity and community, prison narratives, illness, trauma and coming-out narratives as much as celebrity memoirs, graphic life writing and forms of Internet self-presentation. These multiple forms and practices produce, or allow critics to freshly address, new ‘subject formations’ within specific historical and cultural localities. Finally, scholars have engaged with the role of aesthetic practices that “turn ‘life itself’ into a work of art,” developing “ zoegraphy as a radically post-anthropocentric approach to life narrative” (van den Hengel 2012 : 1), part of a larger attempt to explore auto/biographical figures in relation to concepts of “posthumanism.”

Related Terms

Whereas autobiography, as a term almost synonymous with life writing, signifies a broad range of ‘practices of writing the self’ including pre-modern forms and epistolary or diarial modes, ‘classic’ autobiography hinges upon the notion of the formation of individual identity by means of narrative. With its historical, psychological and philosophical dimensions, it differs from related forms such as memoirs and res gestae. Memoirs locate a self in the world, suggesting a certain belonging to, or contemporaneity with, and being in tune with the world (Neumann 1970 ). However, all these forms imply a certain claim to non-fictionality which, to a certain degree only, sets them off from autobiographical fiction/the autobiographical novel, with highly blurred boundaries and intense generic interaction (Müller 1976 ; Löschnigg 2006 ).

Biography is used today both as a term synonymous with “life writing” (hence the journal Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 1978ff. ) as well as denoting hetero biography, i.e. the narrative of the life of another. (The term “life writing“ also includes heterobiography.) While in narratological terms experimental forms of autobiography may collapse the conventional 1st- vs 3rd-person boundary (§ 2), viewing the self as other, hetero­biography has generated its own distinct poetics and theory, extending from an agenda of resemblance as “the impossible horizon of biography” (“In biography , it is resemblance that must ground identity”; Lejeune [1987] 1988 : 24) to specific considerations of modes of representing the biographical subject, of biographical understanding, or knowledge, and the ethics of heterobiography (Eakin ed. 2004 ; Phelan → Narrative Ethics ).

Topics for Further Investigation

The intersections of hetero- and autobiography remain to be further explored. Significantly, ‘natural’ narratology’s theorizing of vicarious narration and the evolution of FID (Fludernik 1996 ) makes the limits of non-fictional heterodiegetic narration discernible: in its conventional form and refraining from speculative empathy, it must ultimately fail to render “experientiality” or resort to fiction, while autobiography’s experiential dimension invites further investigation (Löschnigg 2010 ). Additional study of the experimental interactions of life writing with no clear dividing lines between auto- and hetero-biography might yield results with interdisciplinary repercussions.

Finally, the field of self-representation and life writing in the new media calls for more research from an interdisciplinary angle.

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Works Cited

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  • Eakin, Paul J., ed. (2004). The Ethics of Life Writing . Ithaca: Cornell UP. 
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  • Weintraub, Karl J. (1982). The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography . Chicago: Chicago UP.

Further Reading

  • Jolly, Margaretta, ed. (2001). Encyclopaedia of Life Writing . London: Fitzroy Dearborn.
  • Schwalm, Helga (2014). “Autobiography/Autofiction.” M. Wagner-Egelhaaf (ed.). Handbook Autobiography/Autofiction . Berlin: de Gruyter, forthcoming.
  • Wagner-Egelhaaf, Martina (2000). Autobiographie . Stuttgart: Metzler.

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10 characteristics of Autobiography and the differences with the biography and novel

We explain what autobiography is and what its general characteristics are. In addition, the differences with the biography, memory and novel.

What is an Autobiography?

The autobiography is  a story of a life or part of it, told by the person who lived it  and from their own perspective. It shows events that you consider important or fundamental in your life , be it from your childhood , adolescence or adulthood .

Autobiography  is considered a literary genre  , often located on the border between history and literature , since it narrates real events but does so from a subjective, authorial approach. It is also related to the biography , the chronicle , the private diary, and other confessional genres of writing .

At present  there is an important reading market for autobiography  , especially that of public personalities, celebrities or famous people in history. In their vital accounts they usually look for some kind of teaching, world view or intimate revelation.

Characteristics of an autobiography  :

Origin of the term.

The term was first used in English:  autobiography  ,  in early 19th century England  , in an article by the poet Robert Southey. However, other sources accuse the German philosopher Friedrich Schlegel of having used it in his essays in 1789.

Background

Within the literary arts, the autobiographical genre, as well as the biographical one,  are among the written works of non-fiction  , at the opposite extreme to narrative fiction, with which it nevertheless shares prose. It is closer to journalistic genres , since it is based on a presumption of authenticity in what is reported by the autobiographer.

Technique

Objectivity

From an autobiography, as we have said,  a certain fidelity and authenticity of the events is expected  , although not so much with respect to the meticulous historical fidelity, as to its very personal approach to the events narrated. This means that the autobiography should not look for exactitudes and historical truths, but rather intimate, subjective truths that have served the author to narrate the relevant events of his own life journey.

In many autobiographies it is exaggerated or simply lies  , as is the famous case of  I need love  (1992) delirious autobiography of the actor Klaus Kinski.

Structure

As in contemporary literary works,  there is no length requirement  for autobiography. It can be as long as you like and can contain as many chapters as the author thinks best.

Differences with the biography

Differences with the biography

Differences with memory

Distinguishing between autobiography and books of memories or confessions is more complicated. Both genres are non-fiction and address the life of the author and narrator himself, but  the autobiography is usually more complete  , more encompassing within the author's life, while the memoirs are usually restricted to a specific moment or a specific event, without going beyond. Both terms are often used synonymously.

Similarities with the novel

Similarities with the novel

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An autobiography is a written account of the life of the writer. Autobiographical accounts are written in first person and may include important public life events as well as private affairs, personal reflections, and emotional reactions.

Autobiography - Literary Genres

What is an Autobiography?

An autobiography is a written account of the life of the writer. Of necessity, autobiographies do not span the entire life of the writer, but generally cover from birth until the time of writing. These accounts may include important public life events as well as private affairs, personal reflections, and emotional reactions. A subset of the autobiography is the memoir, which is smaller in scope than an autobiography and often captures only a particular portion of a writer’s experience. A memoir may be more artistic in style and focus on events that relate to a particular theme, historical time span, or period of public relevance. Elie Wiesel's memoir Night , for instance, focuses only on the years he spent in concentration camps during the Holocaust.

Both autobiographies and memoirs are naturally subjective. They are written in first person and include the reactions and opinions of the writer. At times, autobiographies of notable figures are created through collaboration with a professional writer or through the sole efforts of a ghost writer. Ghost writers and collaborators generally interview a subject at length before writing, and thus attempt to convey the opinions and style of the subject as if he or she was actually writing the account.

Biographies have become quite common in the present day, but historically the genre developed slowly. St. Augustine’s Confessions , written in the late fourth century, is widely considered to be the first Western autobiography. Throughout the Renaissance a few educated citizens recorded their lives; notable among them was Benvenuto Cellini, a 16th century artist who believed that all great men should leave a record of their accomplishments in their own words. This model changed as time went on, and many began to see the autobiography as an agent for social change. The 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries saw the rise of the captivity and slave narratives, most of which promulgated a particular religious, political, or social message. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass , for example, shed light on the cruelties of slavery and played an important role in the American abolitionist movement.

Increasingly, modern readers have found that a life does not need to be highly accomplished or long to merit an autobiography. The famous Diary of Anne Frank is a simple account of an ordinary girl living under extraordinary circumstances, yet her story has been read by millions the world over. All manner of athletes, actors, writers, and singers publish their autobiographies each year. Even memoirs of YouTubers are making solid sales in today’s market. The broad origins of these autobiographies has helped to expose readers to a wider variety of experience and cultural awareness.

Autobiographies can be highly influential, given the fact that those who tell history are often those who shape it. In other words, much of what we know today about particular historical figures is derived from the pictures they painted in their own autobiographies. Today’s biographies continue to shape the narrative of our times. These autobiographical records bring renown to their subjects and capture their stories for generations of readers to come.

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Literature in the autobiography genre.

  • " Brown Girl Dreaming " by Jacqueline Woodson
  • The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
  • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave by Frederick Douglass
  • The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
  • Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
  • I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
  • Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
  • The Story of My Experiments With Truth by Mahatma Gandhi
  • A Writer's Diary by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  • Night by Elie Wiesel
  • The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba
  • I am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai

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The 8 Main Features of Autobiography

An autobiography is an account of the life of a person who is written by herself. The work is personal, since the author is in charge of exposing the details of his life. It is a literary wording of life experiences.

The main function that the autobiography fulfills is the one to allow to see the vital experiences of the author from its own perspective. It is a literary genre that lies on the border between literature and history.

The 8 Main Features of Autobiography

The definition that best fits the autobiography is that of the French writer Philippe Lejeune:"a retrospective narrative in prose that a real person makes of his own existence, while emphasizing his individual life. In particular on the history of his personality ".

One of the main features of autobiography is the author's identity. He is a character and narrator.

An autobiography will always be written in the first person, where the"I"abounds throughout the story. It tells the experiences and experiences of the author, his important events and also the tragic events.

We use what is known as the autobiographical pact, which is the contract between author and reader, where the author agrees that all his autobiography is truthful.

This pact is what allows one to distinguish between an autobiography and an autobiographical novel, where the facts are based on the life of the narrator, but do not have to be perfectly truthful.

Through an autobiography, the author literally writes his life and the changes that have occurred with his personality and his way of being through time. It is narrated in prose and we must take care of the details since it is a literary text

Main features of the autobiography

The autobiography must cover certain points.

You can include all the information that is considered important. It has to be personal, including essential information such as name, age, date of birth, place of residence, etc.

Within the personal information that is included it should be mentioned to the family that you have, the brothers and sisters, the people that mark the important things in your life.

In addition it should include the academic information that the author has received, place of studies, the achievements and prizes received...

It is a non-fiction writing

The autobiographical pact is established between the author and the reader, where everything that is related is true.

The writer in this work has absolute freedom in which he expresses his ideas or feelings about the events and how they influenced him.

It relates the life of the author

It can be considered a totally intimate confession in which the author narrates his most personal secrets.

It analyzes all the facts that happened during a life, and in many cases to put them in perspective of what it has lived.

The autobiography is characterized by the fact that the author, who is also a narrator, is at the same time the protagonist of the stories that are narrated. The writer is the center of the work as he is telling his own story.

Without fixed structure

The autobiography is characterized by not having a fixed structure. Each writer chooses his own structure, does not need to follow a chronological order to narrate the facts happened.

Formal or informal language

In the autobiography the writer can choose the language he wants to use. You can choose the type of language that best suits you to express yourself and tell your life.

You can choose the tone in which to write the biography:

  • It can be a melodramatic tone where the events that happen to the author are unfortunate.
  • A humorous tone where the story is presented from a laughing or comical point of view.
  • An ironic tone, where an idea is expressed by saying the opposite, but so that the reader understands that it is an irony.
  • Sarcastic tone, where the narrations reflect a lack of respect, where sarcasm is a cruel mockery.
  • Heroic tone where the author has a strong personality and emerges from the dangers that arise.
  • Nostalgic tone where pleasant experiences are evoked and remembered with a lost happiness.

Focuses on life

The autobiography is used to tell and narrate the whole life of the author. Unlike memories that focus more on a particular stage or event.

For this reason the autobiography is more complete, since it is not located in a limited period of time.

It is not a fixed rule, the author does not always remember all the moments of his life, in addition he can choose which to include in his work or not.

Draw conclusions and learnings

The autobiographies serve to draw conclusions from the lives of the people, they serve as an exercise of interiorization where they discover all the way that they have followed until arriving at the place where they are.

  • ROSA, Nicolás. The Art of Oblivion: About the Autobiography . Puntosur, 1990.
  • PANESI, Jorge. The price of the autobiography: Jacques Derrida, the circumcised. Orbis Tertius , 1996, vol. 1, paragraph 1.
  • CABALLÉ, Anna. Ink daffodils: essays on autobiographical literature in Spanish . Megazul, 1995.
  • ORBE, Juan Bautista. Autobiography and writing . Corregidor, 1994.
  • Page 1 The autobiography and its related genres. Epos: Journal of Philology , 1989, no. 5, p. 439.
  • OCAMPO, Victoria. Autobiography . South, 1981.
  • GUASCH, Ana María. Visual Autobiographies: From File to Index . .

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Scientific autobiography: some characteristics of the genre

Cet article s’intéresse à une douzaine de récits autobiographiques écrits par des scientifiques et s’attache à en caractériser le genre. Il apparaît clairement qu’une lecture attentive de ces textes est riche en enseignements sur la façon dont la connaissance scientifique est créée, diffusée, recyclée, ainsi que sur les contextes au sein desquels ce processus a lieu. Les inclusions et les omissions de chacun de ces exemples de l’« écriture de soi » est le reflet des influences et processus sociaux qui opèrent lors de la production et l’application de la connaissance scientifique. On discerne également une tension permanente entre l’interprétation personnelle des évènements et l’avancement du projet de la communauté scientifique toute entière.

This article focuses on a dozen examples of autobiographical writing by scientists and attempts to characterise the genre. I argue that a careful reading of autobiographical texts reveals a great deal about the ways and the contexts in which scientific knowledge is created, popularised, and recycled. The material included and omitted in each of these examples of life writing reflects the social influences and processes at work in the production and application of scientific knowledge. A permanent tension between self-promotion, personal interpretation and the furtherance of the project of the scientific community as a whole is also evident.

Index terms

Mots-clés : , keywords: , 1. why study scientific autobiography.

1 In his introduction to La Vie de laboratoire, Bruno Latour is dismissive of accounts of the practices of the scientific community found in the writing of scientists themselves. For him, their works lack inquiry, direct observation and contradiction:

1  This passage is not part of the original English version of Laboratory Life .

Pour donner un peu d’indépendance aux analyses de la science, il est donc nécessaire de ne pas se reposer uniquement sur ce que les savants et chercheurs disent d’eux-mêmes. Ils doivent devenir ce que l’ethnologie nomme un « informateur », un informateur certes privilégié, mais enfin un informateur dont on doute. (Latour 1996: 17) 1

2 Certainly, Latour is defending his own position as the non-participant observer of the scientific process, but his final analysis is inevitably just as unreliable as that of the participant-analyst he relegates to the position of a mere ethnologist’s “informer”. Scientists are rarely dupes: many have a better working knowledge of current theories in the sociology of science than do sociologists or indeed linguists of the basics of science. When they write about what they do – as autoethnologists – they do so in the full knowledge that their version is not the only possible version. Indeed, it is the very unreliability – the subjectivity – of autobiographical writing that makes it worth examining more closely.

3 In a study of Darwin and the genre of biography, Robert M. Young has argued that biography does not merely fill in the “background” of the scientist’s life, but also provides “the materials that take us to the centre of the scientific enterprise”:

Looking at the way this genre chooses to see great artists and scientists reveals perhaps more clearly than the original works themselves how implicated in the culture of its time each work is. Biography historicizes. Its language can make no pretense to the timelessness too often attributed to both art and science. Watching how biography actually approaches a writer can tell us a great deal not only about how science reflects its own historical moment, its own personal sources, but about how much our understanding of and our esteem for science are determined by the culture of the moment. (Young 1987: 203)

4 Similarly, a careful reading of autobiographical documents – their narrative arguments, their inclusions and omissions, their use of language – can teach us a great deal about the ways and the contexts in which scientific knowledge is created, popularized, and recycled. Consider, for instance, the following anecdote recounted by Jon Beckwith in his autobiography Making Genes, Making Waves . Beckwith and his co-workers obtained mutations on the E. coli chromosome that were important for studying the mechanism of membrane protein insertion. This work was in some ways the result of ten years of research on other projects that had included Beckwith serendipitously discovering a whole new area of biology, taking some wrong turns and having some lucky breaks. When the time came for Beckwith’s colleague Hong-Ping to write the research up, they decided to tell the whole tortuous history of the project beginning with the words “This is the story…”. They knew that this was not the accepted way of presenting scientific research, but they believed that recounting the entire course of events would be enlightening for others. The manuscript was submitted to two journals and it was rejected by both. The reviewers felt that the paper read more like a personal memoir than a formal presentation. Beckwith defends his choice in these words:

I had come to see how the scientific process is idealized by its portrayal in school texts and by the image of it purveyed by the media. For those university students who enter scientific careers, the mode of presenting research in scientific journals further strengthens the myth of pure objective science. (2002: 185-186)

He continues:

Yet interesting scientific discoveries are rarely the product of such a linear process. The misrepresentation of the workings of science leaves out the human element, the wrong turns, the surprises, the flashes of intuition, even the passions that drive us in science. It also fails to acknowledge the biases, the assumptions that we all must start with in order to proceed in a scientific investigation. (Beckwith 2002:186)

5 Peri-professional writing, and in particular autobiography, offers us access to these elements in a way that professional texts cannot.

2. A brief typology

6 The works in the mini corpus of autobiographical writing chosen for the purposes of this article show clearly that the field of what I have loosely called scientific autobiography is, in fact, heterogeneous.

Beckwith, Jon. 2002. Making Genes, Making Waves. A Social Activist in Science .

Biro, David. 2000. One Hundred Days. My Unexpected Journey from Doctor to Patient .

Bonner, John Tyler. 2002. Lives of a Biologist, Adventures in a Century of Extraordinary Science .

Feynman, Richard P. 1985. “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!” Adventures of a Curious Character .

Gawande, Atul. 2002. Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science .

Kingsolver, Barbara. 1995. High Tide in Tuscon .

Nurse, Paul. Sir Paul Nurse – Autobiography (Official Nobel Foundation web site).

Verghese, Abraham. 1995. My Own Country. A Doctor’s Story .

Watson, James D. 1968 The Double Helix. A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA .

Watson, James D. 2001. Genes, Girls and Gamow .

Williams, William Carlos. 1948. The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams .

7 In this short list there are non-exclusive, overlapping examples of a memoir documenting a double life in science and in social activism (Beckwith); an autopathography written by a doctor suffering from paroxysmal nocturnal haemoglobinuria (Biro);a book combining autobiography and the history of biology (Bonner) , a collaborative life narrative in the form ofa series of stories culled from taped conversations and then set down on paper (Feynman); a collection of creative nonfiction essays by a trainee surgeon inspired and illustrated by confessional autobiographical detail (Gawande); a similar collection by a “trained biologist” who abandoned science for writing and which might be described as eco/autobiography because the emphasis is often on the mutual influences of person and place (Kingsolver); a short autobiographical note for the official Nobel Foundation web site (Nurse); an auto/biography combining the story of a physician in Tennessee with that of his AIDS patients, a book which might also be considered autothanatography since most of those patients died during the period covered (Verghese); a memoir of a specific period and a specific discovery, that of the helical structure of DNA, undoubtedly one of the canonical works of this genre (Watson, 1968), and its disappointing sequel (Watson, 2001), and a literary life narrative by someone who managed to combine medicine and a highly successful literary career (Williams). Needless to say, this typology is far from exhaustive.

3. Why do scientists write autobiography?

  • 2  There are, of course, important differences between the lives and professional activities of those (...)

8 Writing about oneself is clearly not undertaken lightly and the scientist 2 who does so often considers the result an important piece of work. During an interview in Time magazine marking the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the double helix, James Watson was asked “What’s your second greatest achievement?” He replied, “Writing The Double Helix . I think the book will last. No one else could have written it” (2003: 44).

9 The motivations for self-representation in writing are myriad. At the very simplest level we might say that scientists write because they have a good story to tell.Watson, for example, knew that the manner in which he and Crick had arrived at their proposed structure for DNA – the double helix – would make a great story. Lawrence Bragg writes in the introduction it is “drama of the highest order; the tension mounts and mounts towards the final climax” (Watson 1968: 9). Others write through a desire to set the record straight:FrancisCrick, for example, produced What Mad Pursuit in response to Watson’s book. The aim of scientific autobiographers may also be to make priority claims and gain recognition and prestige both inside and outside the scientific community.

10 Pondering a similar question, Greg Myers examines the motivations of scientists who write for popular journals, a seemingly futile occupation when all the professional rewards are for articles in professional journals. Why then do they spend valuable time on these apparently less rewarding productions?

  • 3  The fee for writing in popular journals may be relatively small but successful books can be real m (...)

Not for the money; the fee is small […]. They don’t get rewarded with citations either; these journals are not usually places for first reports or findings, and they do not allow for extensive review or theoretical development. But there is clearly prestige within the research community attached to being asked to speak for one’s field, and there is the chance to address a broad audience that includes many researchers and administrators in related fields who would not ordinarily read one’s work in specialist journals. (Myers 1990: 145) 3

4  Cf. Myers (1990: 247-248) on the subject of grant proposals and the rhetoric of self-presentation.

11 Autobiographical writing can be considered part of what Latour calls the accreditation system. Credibility is created and accumulated through formal autobiography just as it is through that other form of life writing essential in grant proposals, the CV. 4 This pursuit of recognition through autobiographical writing can be phenomenally successful as Steve Jones declares in his introduction to The Double Helix: “Everyone knows about viruses, or the background radiation of the big bang, but almost nobody could name the individuals who discovered them. DNA is different and this book is the reason why” (Watson 1968: i). Self-representation can therefore be seen as an operation in persuasion, the objective being to make readers appreciate the contribution made by the author’s own work to the important ongoing project of science.

12 The autobiography may also serve to restate a scientific claim. Woolgar analyses the Nobel address of an astrophysicist and claims that “the events have to be redefined as a discovery in each new text, so that a late text does work just as the first publication did. [… I]t is not unusual for a scientist to have an occasion to present a scientific claim in terms of a narrative of his or her career” (Woolgarcited by Myers [1990: 27]).

13 The declared objective of the autobiographical project is often to promote the public understanding of science and therefore, less explicitly, to further the cause of the scientific community as a whole, “Although such [works] may not directly advance the career of the individual writer, they are essential to the survival of the discipline, dependent as it is on public support for research” (Myers 1990: 145). In a commentary on The Double Helix , Edward Yoxen argues that Watson went beyond the conventional limits of popularisation to convey the experience of carrying out a new style of scientific research based on competition. He claims that Watson’s express intention was to challenge the received account of scientific research:

Speaking from a high-level plateau of scientific achievement, he set out didactically to create a new image of a scientific dedication in an age of highly competitive endeavour when one’s own lapses could lose one the race. It was his way of telling people how to take science seriously and how to conduct oneself within a set of norms that took competition as a basic fact of life. (Yoxen 1985: 179)

14 Paradoxically scientific autobiographers also write to assert their singularity . As regards the scientific community, their message often seems to be double: “I am one of them; a respected member of the tribe, but I’m not like them”. Creative writing materialises that difference. In the words of Claude Bernard , “ L ’ art, c ’ est moi; la science, c ’ est nous ” ( In Beer 1987: 39).

15 Some of these motivations will be examined in more detail when we look at the characteristics of the genre.

4. Who reads scientific autobiographies?

  • 5  Young condemns this blind belief in the wisdom of scientists: “They can pronounce with the authori (...)

16 Readers appear to respect what scientists have to say in a way that they do not necessarily respect the pronouncements of other categories of expert. 5 Presumably they are interested in the personality behind the scientific process or the application of scientific knowledge, perhaps they are interested in the idea and the story of its genesis, keen to know more about the story behind the story, the face behind the concept. They may be flattered by the illusion of a privileged one-to-one encounter with scientific and medical authority or seduced by the promise of a confidential, conversational tone; the prospect of entertaining anecdotes and inside information, the taking off of the white coat, but the reassurance that it is hanging on a hook somewhere there in the background. They want to be entertained but they also want access to a sort of power – the power of scientific knowledge – and they want it wrapped up in a more attractive package than the research article.

  • 6  In fact, increasingly, the blurb is not only on the back of the book but on the front cover, spraw (...)

17 The blurb on the back of the books, 6 that paratext par excellence , the hook calculated to incite readers to part with their money, throws some light on what publishers believe readers of scientific autobiography to be interested in. Here are a few examples: “Like nothing else in literature, it gives one the feel of how creative science really happens” (C. P. Snow on The Double Helix ); “[A] story told from the closely observed heat of an epidemic. Far from being a sociological discourse, it is intensely personal; Dr Verghese’s vulnerability and his lucid prose give this book the emotional momentum of a good novel” (John Irving on My Own Country ); “a wise, funny, passionate and totally honest self-portrait of one of the greatest men of our age” ( Surely You ’ re Joking Mr Feynman ); “It is the story of a doctor with the heart of a poet” ( The New York Times Book Review on One Hundred Days ); “an unflinching view from the scalpel’s edge, where science is ambiguous, information is limited, the stakes are high, yet decisions must be made” ( Complications ); “With the eyes of a scientist and the vision of a poet […]” ( High Tide in Tucson ).

18 There are also celebrity endorsements of the quality of the writing: Bill Bryson declares, “I don’t know if Atul Gawande was born to be a surgeon – I very much suspect so – but he was certainly born to write.” Verghese is even compared to Conrad and Nabokov. As the advertising pitch shows, several double competencies are required of scientist-autobiographers: scientific authority but quality writing too; the thrill of the novel with the stamp of approved science. Authors must be both credible scientists and accomplished stylists; credible describers of the mysteries of the scientific world but also adept at demystification. They must have proven professional skill and knowledge and interesting personal lives too.

19 Who reads scientific autobiography? Probably much the same sort of person as reads popular science: both non-scientists and scientists. In a review of One Hundred Days in the medical press, one doctor reviewer gives a brief history of autopathography by doctors and concludes that “Clinicians are fascinated by the genre – perhaps because they are intrigued, if not intimidated, by role reversal, a frustrating if enlightening movement from active to passive” (Duffin 2000: 1857). But what interests the lay reader is not necessarily what interests the clinician in this case. The reviewer continues:

[Biro’s] tale is interspersed with lucid explanations of bone marrow function and T-cell depleted transplantation, useful to anyone facing this procedure. But these explanations interrupt the personal tale of unusual family dynamics, which is, for me, much more compelling. (Duffin 2000: 1857)

20 Whereas this doctor-reviewer at least reads not for the science but for the human element, the lay reader is generally more interested in the scientific than the human. Myers claims: “different audiences get different narratives, and different narratives carry different views of the work of science” (Myers 1990: 248). Autobiography, it would appear, carries many closely intertwined narratives directed at a variety of readers with a wide range of motivations.

5. Some characteristics of the genre(s)

21 Given the heterogeneity mentioned earlier, we can rarely talk about a characteristic common to all scientific autobiographical writing. Certain general traits do, however, appear to tie together those under study in the present article albeit in a loose bundle.

22 The first of these is a declaration of honest intent and the assurance of professional integrity.Each of these documents is framed in what Philippe Lejeune (1975) has called the “autobiographical pact” – an implicit contract between reader and writer. The autobiographical pact, the contract of identity, is sealed primarily in the proper name: the author’s name is identical to that of the narrator and we consequently read the text written by the author to whom it refers as reflexive or autobiographical. For Lejeune, this is fundamental:

Dans ce travail, j’étais guidé par quelque chose d’essentiel : la récurrence obstinée d’un certain type de discours adressé au lecteur, ce que j’ai appelé le « pacte autobiographique ». Très vite, je me suis mis à faire une anthologie de ces préambules propitiatoires, de ces serments, de ces appels au peuple, avec l’impression qu’ils disaient déjà tout ce que je pourrais dire ! Ce discours contenait fatalement sa propre vérité : il n’était pas une simple assertion, mais un acte de langage, un performatif (je ne connaissais pas encore l’expression), qui faisait ce qu’il disait. C’était une promesse. En y croyant je n’étais pas une dupe, ou un ethnologue naïf qui croit à la vérité littérale des légendes que les indigènes lui racontent, j’étais dans la vérité de cette magie ! (Lejeune: web page)

23 This passage, taken from an autobiographical text on Lejeune’s “autopacte” website, is in the past tense because he later reformulated his theory, believing that it wasn’t so much a pact, which supposes that the reader too is promising something, but more of a unilateral engagement on the part of the writer. He has now reconsidered that rectification and thinks that perhaps he wasn’t mistaken after all.

24 Because of the autobiographical pact, the reader assesses the narrative in ways that are suspended in fictional forms of literature. The autobiographical pact is also embedded in dedications to people whose names also appear in the narrative (Verghese), in assurances that “these stories are true” (Gawande), in claims that extensive use has been made of contemporary letters to date events (Watson), in admissions that some people will not be happy with the book, and perhaps paradoxically in declarations that “all names, certain identifying characteristics and temporal events have been changed” (Verghese). It may also be expressed in the title – Watson’s working title for the Double Helix was Honest Jim . Others have included the words “surgeon” or “doctor” in their subtitles.

25 The concept of an autobiographical pact is still more complex and interesting when applied to scientific autobiography since the implied contract demands not only the honesty of the individual in being who s/he says s/he is when recounting past events and experiences but also his or her scientific credibility: the guarantee that the science is accurate. Consequently, assurances of scientific credibility are also to be found in the paratext; in prefaces, synopses, vitals and author’s notes. Even in those of Barbara Kingsolver, a modest ex-student of biology where we are assured that “Barbara Kingsolver was trained as a biologist before becoming a writer”, that she is indebted to the editors of Natural History who invited her “back from poetics to science”, and by protestations that if it hadn’t been for the encouragement of her literary agent she would still be “labouring in a cubicle as a technical writer, and that’s the truth” (Kingsolver 1995: x-xi). These disclosures all serve to establish the author’s scientific credibility and legitimise her right to write about scientific matters.

26 Author photographs also help seal the autobiographical pact and establish scientific authority. David Biro’s cover photograph shows him wearing a respectable shirt and tie under the symbolic and persuasive white coat: the publishers have chosen to showcase his role in this narrative as a doctor rather than as a patient (we assume it is him in the photograph). Abraham Verghese appears on the cover of his book without the white coat but in a medical context, a stethoscope draped around his neck, and a pose suggesting a comfortable bedside manner. A patient with AIDS is visible in the background, further confirming the veracity of the document.

27 Scientific authority is also materialised in the presence of photographs of the author with other scientists, in technical diagrams and in the scholarly apparatus of “notes on sources” including references to well-known scientific reviews. However, because the reader has not agreed to a scholarly piece of writing, these notes are deferred to the unobtrusive final pages without so much as a footnote to refer to them (Gawande).

28 Along with these multiform assurances of scientific authority we nevertheless find claims that the narrative is above all to be read as a personal interpretation of events. If textbooks are, as has been claimed, a mosaic of claims from which the personal and the provisional have been removed, autobiographical writing is the very opposite. It is rather a distillation of the personal element. Watson, for example, declares:

[…] this account represents the way I saw things then, in 1951-3: the ideas, the people and myself.

I am aware that the other participants in this story would tell parts of it in other ways, sometimes because their memory of what happened differs from mine and, perhaps in even more cases, because no two people ever see the same events in exactly the same light. (Watson 1968: 13-14)

29 In the sequel to this book, Watson’s revindication of the right to personal interpretation stretches the autobiographical pact to the limit. In his foreword, Peter Pauling voices the following reservation, “As a work of reference to what actually happened, this book is unreliable. There are many mistakes and errors of fact” (Watson 2002: ix).

30 In most cases however, the combination of the autobiographical pact, the assurance of scientific authority and the promise of a personal approach to the material invites readers to consider the narrator as a uniquely qualified authority, compelling the reader’s belief in the story and in the importance of the narrator.

31 Another common characteristic tying these scientists’ autobiographies together is a concern with the accessibility of science. Explicitly or implicitly, writers of scientific autobiography consider themselves to be mediators between the world of science and the non-scientist. Often the authors see themselves as ideal mediators because, for some reason, they stand apart from the community being described. Atul Gawande creates his niche in this way: “I am a surgical resident […] and this book arises from the intensity of that experience […] a resident has a distinctive vantage point on medicine. You are an insider, seeing everything and a part of everything, yet at the same time you see it anew” (Gawande 2002: 7-8). Indeed, there is in all of these books the expression of a strange sense of displacement, perhaps the catalyst for self-representation. Watson is not in his own country and not working in the field he was trained for. Gawande is in the process of professional metamorphosis. Verghese has never really had a home and is now moving around for career reasons. Kingsolver is geographically displaced. Biro is temporarily in the land of the ill, on the other side of the doctor patient fence and Feynman flits from one activity to another. Beckwith moves between social activism and research, and Bonner writes of practices in a world of scientific research that has changed beyond all recognition.

32 Feynman is concerned with the notion of integrity vis-à-vis the general public. He reports saying in his Caltec commencement address:

I would like to add something that’s not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you’re talking as a scientist. […] I’m talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you’re maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen. (Feynman 1985: 343)

33 Scientific discourse is frequently described as deliberately exclusive. Autobiographical writing, on the other hand, has to be inclusive, otherwise it would have an audience as limited as that of professional journals. This does not mean, however, that there is no technical language, but that language is usually either glossed, reformulated, joked about or used simply to establish the author’s authority in the field. By this I mean that the author does not intend the lay reader to understand every single concept but merely to be convinced of his/her scientific competence. Take this passage from Atul Gawande’s book, for example, where he describes the work of his father, a urologist:

[…] he has had to learn to put in penile protheses, to perform microsurgery, to reverse vasectomies, to do nerve-sparing prostatectomies, to implant artificial urinary sphincters. He’s had to learn to use shock-wave lithotripters, electrohydraulic lithotripters, and laser lithotripters (all instruments for breaking up kidney stones); to deploy double J ureteral stents and Silicone Figure Four Coil stents and Retro-Inject Multi-Length stents (don’t even ask); to maneuver fiber-optic ureteroscopes. (Gawande 2002: 25-26)

34 Note that while the word lithotripter is glossed, the last three stents are not: “don’t even ask” may be a jokey aside but it establishes, nonetheless, Gawande’s superior mastery of the language and the procedures of surgery.

35 In many ways scientific autobiography might be seen as the ultimate popularisation – an effort by the scientist to make the opaque world of his/her practices accessible to the lay reader. Various commentators have written on the importance of popularisation work on the production of scientific knowledge by means of a sort of backwash effect. Some have even gone as far as to suggest that the popular doesn’t just influence the professional but has priority (Myers 1990: 190). Indeed, we might adopt Myers’ description, originally applied to review articles but equally applicable to autobiographies of “textual forms in which the original communication is modified, amplified, fused and melted” (Myers 1993: 70). Alternatively, we might just as well take up Mellor’s less viscous image of popular books acting as “nodal points in an intertextual web” (Mellor 2003: 509). She claims that popular books do work for the scientific community in a not entirely innocent way: “Indeed they are interesting precisely because of the active boundary work they do in protecting the position of science in a hierarchy of ways of knowing while appearing to be merely playing the popular market” (Mellor 2003: 519).

36 We also see in all of these autobiographies the reflection of the social influences and social processes at work in the production and application of scientific knowledge.These writings clearly show, for example, the ways in which scientists knowingly live their lives to create the best CV possible, while taking into account personal factors. This passage from Paul Nurse’s autobiographical note illustrates that close knit:

It was now 1980 and Anne and myself had two little children Sarah and Emily, and we were wondering whether to stay permanently in Edinburgh. This possibility bothered me as I thought it was not advisable to remain in one academic environment, and the long dark winters in Edinburgh could be rather dismal. I also thought that the next stage in cell cycle analysis required molecular genetics, and fission yeast was not developed for these types of experiments, and so I looked for an environment which would make this possible. (Nurse: web page)

37 Young comments on this hustling phenomenon that so profoundly influences the way scientists live:

The requirements of the research, the next post, the next grant are, I believe, even more pressing and blinkering than they are in other niches of the division of labour. Everyone knows this about medical education and training. It is not so well-researched and understood in physics, chemistry, molecular biology and engineering. This needs to change. I also think that scientists – except when they are doing PR or speaking at prize-giving ceremonies – know perfectly that they are utterly immersed in the same cultural, economic and other conflicts, contradictions and compromises as the rest of us. They hustle ­– more and more as governments squeeze them. They really must give up their false-self facades. (Young 1993: web page)

38 Of course, some of these scientists refused to take up the false-self facades condemned by Young. Jon Beckwith, more than most scientists, is aware of the social influences and ideological influences at work in the biology arena. On announcing their genetic feat, the first isolation of a gene from a chromosome, he, along with co-workers, expressed concern that such manipulations could ultimately be dangerous for humanity. He comments: “Little in my scientific career up to that point had connected with social concerns about science. But just as there was a scientific trajectory in the late 1950s and 1960s, there was also a political trajectory” (Beckwith 2002: 37). Later in the autobiography, he expresses regret that young scientists are not educated in past controversies surrounding the social impact of science, arguing that they thus lose a part of their history – and in his view “a part of their humanity” (Beckwith 2002: 56).

39 Autobiographical writing might also be seen as an arena in which writers are able to justify choices made, be they professional or personal. Abraham Verghese, for example, decides against a procedural speciality which financially would be much more lucrative and much more acceptable in the Asian doctor community, while Biro decides to go ahead with a bone marrow transplant against his first specialist’s advice (a choice not entirely vindicated). This justification is a message apparently intended for both the professional community and the family entourage. Not surprisingly, another common characteristic is a personal investment in creative writing. William Carlos Williams is the obvious example: for him, the need to write was imperious. When he had an idea he had to get it down on paper, he had to cleanse himself of his torments, even if it meant writing between patients. In his own words, he was “like a woman at term” (Williams 1948: foreword). David Biro too had invested time in learning about literature, even studying with Terry Eagleton at Oxford and organising his schedule as a dermatologist around writing in the afternoons.

7  Cf. for example « Portrait d'un biologiste en capitaliste sauvage » ( In Latour 1993: 100-129).

40 Let us return to our initial question, why study scientific autobiography? Young has argued for the importance of biography in understanding the creation of science, claiming that, “biography is not an adjunct to the serious business of understanding nature, human nature, and history. Rather, […] biography is neither finally personal nor historical but the crucible in which we can forge the best understanding of those forces” (Young 1987: 219). Likewise, we would argue that autobiography is a fundamental element of our understanding of the scientific process, and that many scientific lives are, in fact, autobiography-driven. Career moves are made within the scientific community to accumulate credit as Bruno Latour has shown 7 but that credit means nothing if it is not set down on paper and submitted to the appropriate audience. Paul de Man asserts:

We assume the life produces the autobiography as an act produces its consequences, but can we not suggest, with equal justice, that the autobiographical project may itself produce and determine the life and that whatever the writer does is in fact governed by the technical demands of self-portraiture and thus determined, in all aspects, by the resources of its medium? (de Man 1979: 920)

  • 8  For an account of the use of scientific autobiography in the teaching of chemistry see Caroll & Se (...)

41 Although this article has not been concerned with the specific applications of autobiography in the field of ESP, it is clear that a close reading of these autobiographical texts in the ESP classroom would be a useful addition to our already well-established use of other authentic scientific texts, 8 both in terms of linguistic exploitation and the joint ethnographic exploration, by teacher and student, of the target discourse community.

Bibliography

Beckwith, Jon. 2002. Making Genes, Making Waves. A Social Activist in Science . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Beer, Gillian. 1987. “Problems of description in the language of discovery”. In Levine, George, One Culture . Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 35-58.

Biro, David. 2000. One Hundred Days. My Unexpected Journey from Doctor to Patient . New York: Vintage.

Bonner, John Tyler. 2002. Lives of a Biologist, Adventures in a Century of Extraordinary Science Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Caroll, Felix A. & Jeffrey I. Seeman. 2001. “Placing science into its human context: Using scientific autobiography to teach chemistry”. Journal of Chemical Education 78,1618-1623.

Crick, Francis. 1988. What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery . New York: Basic Books.

de Man, Paul. 1979. “Autobiography as de-facement”. Modern Language Notes 94/5, 919-930.

Duffin, Jacalyn. 2000. “The doctor and the zebra”. In CMAJ 162/13, 1857-1860.

Feynman, Richard P. 1985. “Surely You ’ re Joking Mr. Feynman!” Adventures of a Curious Character . London: Vintage.

Gawande, Atul. 2002. Complications: A Surgeon ’ s Notes on an Imperfect Science . London: Profile.

Kingsolver, Barbara.1995. High Tide in Tuscon: Essays from Now or Never . New York: Harper.

Latour, Bruno. 1993. La Clef de Berlin et autres leçons d ’ un amateur de sciences . Paris: la Découverte.

Latour, Bruno & Steve Woolgar. 1986 [1979]. Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts . Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Latour, Bruno & Steve Woolgar. 1996. La vie de laboratoire: la production des faits scientifiques. Paris: La Découverte.

Lejeune, Philippe. 1975. Le Pacte autobiographique. Paris: Seuil.

Lejeune, Philippe. Autopacte. < http://www.autopacte.org/ >.

Lejeune, Philippe. “Le pacte autobiographique, 25 ans après”. < http://www.autopacte.org/Pacte_ 25_ans_apr%E8s.html >.

Mellor, Felicity. 2003. “Between fact and fiction: Demarcating science from non-science in popular physics books.” Social Studies of Science 33/4, 509-538.

Myers, Greg. 1990. Writing Biology : Texts in the Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge . Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

Myers, Greg. 1991. “Stories and styles in two molecular biology review articles”. InBazerman, Charles & James Paradis, Textual Dynamics of the Professions: Historical and Contemporary Studies of Writing in Professional Communities . Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

Nurse, Paul.  “Sir Paul Nurse – Autobiography.” Official Nobel Foundation < http://www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/2001/nurse-autobio.html >.

Smith, Sidonie & Julia Watson. 2001. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives . Minneapolis, Minn: University of Minnesota Press.

Time 161/9, March 3, 2003

Verghese, Abraham. 1995. My Own Country: A Doctor ’ s Story . New York: Vintage.

Watson, James D.1968. The Double Helix. A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA . London: Penguin.

Watson, James D. 2001. Genes, Girls and Gamow . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Williams, William Carlos. 1948. The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams . New York: New Directions.

Woolgar, Steve. 1980. “Discovery, logic and sequence in a scientific text”. In Knorr et al . (eds.), The Social Process of Scientific Investigation. Dordrecht: D. Riedel, 239-268.

Young, Robert M. 1987. “Darwin and the genre of biography”. In Levine, George One Culture , Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 203-224.

Young, Robert M. 1993 “What scientists have to learn”. Revised text of a talk given at the Wellcome Trust < http://human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/paper31h.html >.

Yoxen, Edward. 1985. “Speaking out about competition. An Essay on ‘The Double Helix’ as popularisation”. In Shinn, Terry & RichardWhitley, Expository Science: Forms and Functions of Popularisation . Dordrecht: D. Riedel, 163-181.

2  There are, of course, important differences between the lives and professional activities of those who work in medicine and those who work in science. For the purposes of the present article, however, I include doctors of medicine under the term “scientists”.

3  The fee for writing in popular journals may be relatively small but successful books can be real money-spinners. Watson proudly declares in Genes, Girls and Gamow that his book Biology was earning him the equivalent of half of his professor’s salary. Similarly, Mellor points out that Stephen Hawkings earned about £2 for each of the 9 million copies of A Brief History of Time (Mellor 2003: 519).

5  Young condemns this blind belief in the wisdom of scientists: “They can pronounce with the authority of an expert on objectivity about all sorts of things and, for the most part, get away with it. They are not only thought expert in rationality; they are thought wise. I am thinking, for example, of some of the sillier pronouncements of Louis Wolpert (who condemns sociology and the philosophy of science out of hand) and Richard Dawkins (who deploys scientistic analogies with touching philosophical simplicity), as well as of the ways scientists from Einstein to Bronowski to Zuckerman to Medawar have been treated as gurus when they hold forth far beyond their areas of undoubted contribution. They offer science as above the battle and as an arbiter of cultural issues in a startling and deeply embarrassing way” (Young 1993).

6  In fact, increasingly, the blurb is not only on the back of the book but on the front cover, sprawled across the first few pages and in the inside of the covers too.

8  For an account of the use of scientific autobiography in the teaching of chemistry see Caroll & Seeman (2001).

Bibliographical reference

Lesley Graham , “Scientific autobiography: some characteristics of the genre” ,  ASp , 43-44 | 2004, 57-67.

Electronic reference

Lesley Graham , “Scientific autobiography: some characteristics of the genre” ,  ASp [Online], 43-44 | 2004, Online since 17 March 2010 , connection on 24 February 2024 . URL : http://journals.openedition.org/asp/1039; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/asp.1039

About the author

Lesley graham.

Lesley Graham is maître de conférences at the Université Victor Segalen Bordeaux 2. Her research interests currently centre on peri-professional writing, the sociology of science, and the discourse of medicine. She is an active member of the Équipe d ’ Accueil 2025. [email protected]

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characteristics of the autobiography genre

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  • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave

Frederick Douglass

  • Literature Notes
  • The Autobiography as Genre, as Authentic Text
  • Book Summary
  • Character List
  • Summary and Analysis
  • Garrison's Preface
  • Letter From Wendell Phillips, Esq.
  • Chapter III
  • Chapter VII
  • Chapter VIII
  • Frederick Douglass Biography
  • Critical Essays
  • The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro
  • Slavery as a Mythologized Institution
  • Slavery in the United States
  • The Fugitive Slave Act
  • Slavery in Maryland
  • Douglass' Canonical Status and the Heroic Tale
  • Douglass' Other Autobiographies
  • Full Glossary for The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave
  • Essay Questions
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Critical Essays The Autobiography as Genre, as Authentic Text

In the eighteenth century, autobiography was one of the highest forms of literary art. Fiction was deemed unworthy, while narration of facts was aesthetically and philosophically pleasing. This prevailing convention overwhelmed fiction to such a degree that many novelists passed their works off as non-fiction, sometimes by creating prefaces written by supposedly real characters, who vouched for the authenticity of the story. Whether readers really believed in the truth of these stories is hard to say.

Although Douglass wrote in the nineteenth century, his Narrative belongs to this tradition of the autobiography as a superior genre. Autobiography is thus an ideal genre for arguing a political position.

Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography is one of the best examples of the autobiography genre. Douglass was a reader of Franklin's works and emulated some of Franklin's rhetoric and style. Like Franklin, Douglass' narrative also depicts, in part, the author's rise from poverty to become a major figure in American society. Like Franklin, Douglass also stresses perseverance, sacrifice, hard work and success — values of an emerging American culture. Douglass admired the accomplishments of the framers of the Constitution and, in particular, Franklin's achievements. Indeed, during his lifetime, Douglass was described as a black Benjamin Franklin.

Douglass' Narrative, particularly in the first few chapters, presents evidence in an objective and almost scientific manner. This wealth of verisimilitude adds an authentic feel to the work. Douglass may have been aware that other autobiographers sometimes added emotions and personal opinions into narratives. In particular, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Romantic writers tended to extol the virtues of emotion in their works. One of the most famous of these autobiographies is Jean Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, a work marked by extensive use of emotional rhetoric. Douglass' work is consciously void of melodramatic discourse; he presents the atrocities of slavery without sensationalism or the Gothic horrors of nineteenth-century Romanticism.

Douglass entitles his autobiography The Narrative of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself to stress his authorship of the work. There were other slave narratives in his time, some told by former slaves to white writers, and Douglass wanted to distinguish his work from other such narratives. The phrase "Written by Himself" persuasively makes the entire text seem more authentic. Douglass was aware that, on publishing his work, there would be racists who would charge that a self-educated fugitive slave could not possibly be capable of writing such an astute document. His statement of authorship is thus a pre-emptive rhetorical strategy to counter such racist critics.

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Autobiography: what is autobiography, definition, characteristics, how to write an autobiography

What is an autobiography.

It is a narration about the life of a person written entirely by him/herself, being the main reason why it is distinguished from the biography. The autobiography is one of the subgenres of the didactic genre in which the author gives an account of his experiences in life, from his birth to the present time, if he so wishes.

Often within the autobiography may be present other subgenres of the same genre or not, as are the epistle, memoirs, diaries, etc..

Meaning of the subgenre autobiography

The term comes from the English autobiography, which was born as a neologism during the first years of the 19th century. It is considered that the term is used for the first time by Robert Southey, a renowned poet and biographer of the time, who mentioned the term in an article around 1809. However, many experts consider that the term would be named much earlier.

Definition of the subgenre autobiography

The autobiography can be defined as a text in which episodes of life are narrated written by the person who actually lived them. In autobiography, emphasis is placed on decisive situations in the author’s life. Its relationship and links between literature and history are often discussed.

History and origin of autobiography

Before the term properly defined appeared, during antiquity, texts of this type had already begun to be made, although they did not consider all the features of autobiography that we consider today. One of the most important works that is considered a precursor of the subgenre is called The Confessions of St. Augustine.

subgenre autobiography

Characteristics of the autobiography subgenre

Let’s look at the key characteristics of this didactic subgenre:

Life of the author

Another of the forms with which the autobiography has been defined is directly related to a form of confession, since the autobiography is considered to be a revelation of the intimate life told in the first person that the author makes of his life and work, whose personal content allows to increase the depth of his life with the reader.

It is important to keep in mind that always, in the autobiography, it will be the author giving an account of his life in the text, so he becomes the center of the story itself.

Flexible structure

Another aspect that is important to mention is that the autobiography has a structure that allows the author to use it in his own way, so that he is not subject to a defined scheme, but can accommodate the information as he sees fit. On the other hand, he also has the freedom to choose the type of language he will use to narrate his autobiography. Much of this is evident in published autobiographies in which comic features can be observed within the text, as well as others that are very sad and nostalgic.

Extension of the autobiography

Since it is a completely free structure on the part of the author, the length is also handled with total freedom, which is why there is no fixed length that establishes how long it should be.

How to write an autobiography?

Now that we have seen everything related to the composition and aspects of the autobiography, it is time to review how we can start writing one. To do this, we must take into account the following:

Make an outline

The first thing to do is that, taking into account that there is no defined structure that governs the order of the content that will have the information of the autobiography, it is necessary to consolidate an outline that, broadly speaking, allows us to have an overview of the events and periods of major importance in history.

Adding anecdotes

In contrast to the scheme previously outlined, it is necessary to add to it, from the memory and specific moments, the memories, the experiences that are decisive for decision making and the twists and turns that are usually given to us around a given situation. Therefore, it is not enough to have a general overview, but it must be nourished by funny, sad, complex experiences, etc., that complement those facts. This will also serve to define the tone of the autobiography.

Start writing 

When you have this information and points ready, it is time to start writing. Choose the point from which you want to tell the story, it does not necessarily have to be from birth, when our memories are few and what we know is given by close relatives who saw us grow up. You can choose another moment of your life from which there is a higher level of awareness to try.

Keep in mind that the text should be constructed in the first person, so it should be written from the “I”.

Consider the context 

A basic element that is of great importance for the development of an autobiography is the context. This means, for example, from the time and historical place in which one lives, since it allows to locate the reader and in fact, allows to refer and consider inclinations and consequences of decisions and events that one had to live. This, on the other hand, adds a content of fundamental interest to keep the reader’s attention.

Division of the autobiography

Although this will depend on the writer’s style, many authors divide the text into chapters or sections through which the reader follows the route. This can be useful as a reference point also for the writer, where he can divide not only the moments of his life, but research and all kinds of annexes that he wants to incorporate to the moments.

Remember that it is always a good help to read published autobiographies of important or relevant figures in history (below we leave you an excerpt and authors that you can review), this will serve to have a previous idea about the writing possibilities that may be present in the autobiography and how you can print your own touch in its development.

Most important authors and works

Some of the most important authors and writers of the subgenre, due to the compilation of information and the recognition their works received as autobiographies, are: Saint Theresa, Giacomo Casanova, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Johann Wolfgang, Thomas de Quincey, Francois René de Chateaubriand, Leo Tolstoy, José Zorrilla, André Gide, Stendhal, among others.

Example of the sub-genre autobiography

One of the most important works of this subgenre is the work entitled The Confessions of Augustine of Hippo, considered the main exponent of autobiography. This is an excerpt from the work:

“I was saying this and weeping with the bitterest contrition of my heart, when behold, from the next house I heard a voice as of a boy or girl, singing and repeating many times: Take and read, take and read. My countenance changed, and I immediately began to consider with particular care whether by any chance the boys used to sing that or something similar in any of their games, and it did not appear to me that I had ever heard it. So, repressing the impetus of my tears, I got up from that place, not being able to interpret that voice in any other way than as an order from heaven, in which I was commanded by God to open the book of the Epistles of St. Paul, and read the first chapter that happened to come to me. For I had heard it told of the holy Abbot Anthony, that entering by chance into the church at the time those words of the Gospel were read, Go, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and then follow me, he had understood them as if they spoke to him determinately, and obeying that oracle, he had been converted to Thee without any detention.”
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COMMENTS

  1. The Genre of Autobiography: Definition and Characteristics

    The blurring of fiction and truth characteristic of autobiography has even led to the creation of a subdivision within the genre of autobiography that deals with fictionalized self-accounts ("Serge Doubrovsky" 70). Serge Doubrovsky was a French author who wrote principally about the Holocaust.

  2. Autobiography

    autobiography, the biography of oneself narrated by oneself. Autobiographical works can take many forms, from the intimate writings made during life that were not necessarily intended for publication (including letters, diaries, journals, memoirs, and reminiscences) to a formal book-length autobiography.

  3. Autobiography

    Activities What is the difference between biography and autobiography? The difference between a biography and an autobiography is the writer. An autobiography is written by an individual...

  4. Autobiography

    Reflective Essay: One's thoughts about something. Confession: An account of one's wrong or right doings. Monologue: An address of one's thoughts to some audience or interlocuters. Biography: An account of the life of other persons written by someone else. Importance of Autobiography Autobiography is a significant genre in literature.

  5. What are the characteristics of an autobiography?

    | Certified Educator Share Cite An autobiography is an account of one's life written by oneself. This means that if you wrote an autobiography, the person who is the topic of the paper would be...

  6. Autobiography: definition and examples

    Autobiographical works take many forms, from intimate writings made during life that are not necessarily intended for publication (including letters, diaries, journals, memoirs, and reminiscences) to the formal autobiography.

  7. Autobiography

    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 ...

  8. PDF Self, Life, and Write: The Genre of Autobiographies

    Characteristics of an autobiography Characteristics of an autobiography uses "I" "we" "us" Person tells you what they remember of an event May include flashbacks Used in first person point of ... The Genre of Autobiography: Definition and Characteristics: Basics of an autobiography. 6 May 2012. ...

  9. Autobiography in Literature: Definition & Examples

    / Genre Form / autobiography autobiography What Is Autobiography? Definition, Usage, and Literary Examples Autobiography Definition An autobiography (awe-tow-bye-AWE-gruh-fee) is a self-written biography.

  10. Autobiography: Definition and Examples

    Example 2. An autobiography by a young Olympian is "Grace, Gold and Glory: My Leap of Faith" by Gabrielle (Gabby) Douglas. She had a writer, Michelle Burford, help her in writing her autobiography. This is common for those who have a story to tell but may not have the words to express it well.

  11. Autobiography: Book Genres Explained

    Autobiographies have several distinct characteristics that set them apart from other genres. The most obvious is that they are written by the person whose life story is being told. This provides a unique, firsthand perspective on the events and experiences described. Autobiographies are typically written in the first person, using "I" statements.

  12. autobiography

    autobiography. The life story of an individual, as written by himself, is called autobiography. It differs from biography in that the person presents himself to his readers as he views himself and as he wants to be understood by others (see Biography ). The autobiographer's most useful source of information is his own memory, aided by diaries ...

  13. Autobiographical Fiction: What It Is, Examples and How To Write It

    May, 7 2021 • 8 min read Autobiographical Fiction: What It Is, Examples and How To Write It Yourself Learn about autobiographical fiction, including famous novel examples and also how to write your own autobiographical fiction. It's normal to take instances from your own life and use them as inspiration for your writing.

  14. Biography

    Biography is sometimes regarded as a branch of history, and earlier biographical writings—such as the 15th-century Mémoires of the French councellor of state, Philippe de Commynes, or George Cavendish's 16th-century life of Thomas Cardinal Wolsey —have often been treated as historical material rather than as literary works in their own right.

  15. Autobiography

    1 Notoriously difficult to define, autobiography in the broader sense of the word is used almost synonymously with "life writing" and denotes all modes and genres of telling one's own life. More specifically, autobiography as a literary genre signifies a retrospective narrative that undertakes to tell the author's own life, or a ...

  16. 10 characteristics of Autobiography and the differences with the

    Characteristics of an autobiography : Origin of the term The term was first used in English: autobiography , in early 19th century England , in an article by the poet Robert Southey. However, other sources accuse the German philosopher Friedrich Schlegel of having used it in his essays in 1789. Background

  17. PDF On the Genre of Autobiography: Typology and Evolution

    explore the genesis of the genre and its evolution from antiquity across modernity to post-modernity. Saint Augustine‟s autobiography deserves special mention because it is widely accepted as the first clear-cut autobiography that set the proverbial ball rolling in this genre.

  18. Book Genres

    An autobiography is a written account of the life of the writer. Of necessity, autobiographies do not span the entire life of the writer, but generally cover from birth until the time of writing. These accounts may include important public life events as well as private affairs, personal reflections, and emotional reactions.

  19. The 8 Main Features of Autobiography

    Without fixed structure The autobiography is characterized by not having a fixed structure. Each writer chooses his own structure, does not need to follow a chronological order to narrate the facts happened. Formal or informal language In the autobiography the writer can choose the language he wants to use.

  20. Scientific autobiography: some characteristics of the genre

    Autobiography, it would appear, carries many closely intertwined narratives directed at a variety of readers with a wide range of motivations. 5. Some characteristics of the genre (s) 21 Given the heterogeneity mentioned earlier, we can rarely talk about a characteristic common to all scientific autobiographical writing.

  21. The Autobiography as Genre, as Authentic Text

    Autobiography is thus an ideal genre for arguing a political position. Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography is one of the best examples of the autobiography genre. Douglass was a reader of Franklin's works and emulated some of Franklin's rhetoric and style. Like Franklin, Douglass' narrative also depicts, in part, the author's rise from poverty to ...

  22. Autobiography: what is, definition, characteristics and more 2024

    Characteristics of the autobiography subgenre. Let's look at the key characteristics of this didactic subgenre: Life of the author. Another of the forms with which the autobiography has been defined is directly related to a form of confession, since the autobiography is considered to be a revelation of the intimate life told in the first person that the author makes of his life and work ...

  23. Scientific autobiography: Some characteristics of the genre

    Scientific autobiography: Some characteristics of the genre Authors: Lesley Graham University of Bordeaux Abstract This article focuses on a dozen examples of autobiographical writing by...

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