The biography of a person written by that person.
autobiographer au'to·bi·og'ra·pher n.autobiographic au'to·bi'o·graph'ic (-bī'ə-grăf'ĭk) or au'to·bi'o·graph'i·cal adj.
autobiographically au'to·bi'o·graph'i·cal·ly adv.
Dictionary:
au·to·bi·og·ra·phy (ô'tō-bī-ŏg'rə-fē) ![]() |
The biography of a person written by that person.
autobiographer au'to·bi·og'ra·pher n.| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: autobiography |
For more information on autobiography, visit Britannica.com.
| Psychoanalysis: Autobiography |
As a literary genre, autobiography, narrating the story of one's own life, is a variation of biography, a form of writing that describes the life of a particular individual. From the point of view of psychoanalysis, autobiography is of interest as the story told by the patient to the analyst and to himself.
Autobiography in the modern sense began as a form of confession (Saint Augustine), even though there are memoirs in classical literature (Xenophon's Anabasis, Julius Caesar's Gallic wars). Such introspective works can be considered attempts at self-analysis before the psychoanalytic discovery of the unconscious. In 1925 Freud wrote An Autobiographical Study, in which the story of his own life merges with that of the creation of psychoanalysis. According to Freud, biographical truth does not exist, since the author must rely on lies, secrets, and hypocrisy (letter to Arnold Zweig dated May 31, 1939). The same is true of autobiography. From this point of view, it is interesting that Freud framed his theoretical victory and the birth of psychoanalysis in terms of a psychological novel.
The function of autobiography is to use scattered bits of memory to create the illusion of a sense of continuity that can hide the anxiety of the ephemeral, or even of the absence of the meaning of existence, from a purely narcissistic point of view. This story constitutes a narrative identity (Ricoeur, 1984-1988) but is self-contained. In contrast, the job of analysis is to modify, indeed to deconstruct, this identity through interpretation. Because the analyst reveals repressed content, he is always a potential spoiler of the patient's autobiographic story (Mijolla-Mellor, 1988).
Although autobiography has been of greater interest to literature (Lejeune, 1975) than to psychoanalysis, a number of psychoanalysts (Wilfred Bion and Marie Bonaparte, among others) have written autobiographies, thus confirming the link between the analyst's pursuit of self-analysis and autobiographical reflection.
Bibliography
Freud, Sigmund. (1925). An autobiographical study. SE, 20: 1-74.
Lejeune, Philippe. (1974). Le pacte autobiographique. Paris: Seuil.
Mijolla-Mellor, Sophie de. (1988). Suvivreà so passé. In L'autobiographie. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
——. (1990). Autobiographie et psychanalyse. Le Coq-Héron, 118, pp. 6-14.
Ricoeur, Paul. (1984-1988). Time and narrative (Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1985)
—SOPHIEDE MIJOLLA-MELLOR
| Grammar Dictionary: autobiography |
A literary work about the writer's own life. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and Isak
| Literary Glossary: Autobiography |
A narrative in which an individual tells his or her life story. Examples include Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography and Amy Hempel's story "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried," which has autobiographical characteristics even though it is a work of fiction.
| Word Tutor: autobiography |
Since he was only six, Jeremy thought he should be a little older before writing his autobiography.
| Quotes About: Autobiography |
Quotes:
"Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self."
- W. H. Auden
"Anyone who attempts to relate his life loses himself in the immediate. One can only speak of another."
- Augusto Roa Bastos
"Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. For autobiography has to do with time, with sequence and what makes up the continuous flow of life. Here, I am talking of a space, of moments and discontinuities. For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have in the moment of recollection. This strange form -- it may be called fleeting or eternal -- is in neither case the stuff that life is made of."
- Walter Benjamin
"Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form."
- John Berger
"A man's memory is bound to be a distortion of his past in accordance with his present interests, and the most faithful autobiography is likely to mirror less what a man was than what he has become."
- Fawn M. Brodie
"Biographical data, even those recorded in the public registers, are the most private things one has, and to declare them openly is rather like facing a psychoanalyst."
- Italo Calvino
See more famous quotes about Autobiography
| Wikipedia: Autobiography |
An autobiography (from the Greek, αὐτός-autos self + βίος-bios life + γράφειν-graphein to write) is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.
Contents |
The word autobiography was first used by the poet Robert Southey in 1809 in the English periodical Quarterly Review, but the form goes back to antiquity. Biographers generally rely on a wide variety of documents and viewpoints; an autobiography however may be based entirely on the writer's memory. Closely associated with autobiography (and sometimes difficult to precisely distinguish from it) is the form of memoir.
See List of autobiographies and Category:Autobiographies for examples. Also see main article Memoir.
In antiquity such works were typically entitled apologia, implying as much self-justification as self-documentation. John Henry Newman's autobiography (first published in 1864) is entitled Apologia Pro Vita Sua in reference to this tradition.
The pagan rhetor Libanius (c. 314–394) framed his life memoir (Oration I begun in 374) as one of his orations, not of a public kind, but of a literary kind that could be read aloud in privacy.
Augustine (354–430) applied the title Confessions to his autobiographical work, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau used the same title in the 18th century, initiating the chain of confessional and sometimes racy and highly self-critical, autobiographies of the Romantic era and beyond.
In the spirit of Augustine's Confessions is the 11th-century Historia Calamitatum of Peter Abelard, outstanding as an autobiographical document of its period.
Zāhir ud-Dīn Mohammad Bābur,who founded the Mughal dynasty of South Asia kept a journal Bāburnāma (Chagatai/Persian: بابر نامہ; literally: "Book of Babur" or "Letters of Babur") which was written between 1493 and 1529.
One of the first great autobiographies of the Renaissance is that of the sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571), written between 1556 and 1558, and entitled by him simply Vita (Italian: Life). He declares at the start: 'No matter what sort he is, everyone who has to his credit what are or really seem great achievements, if he cares for truth and goodness, ought to write the story of his own life in his own hand; but no one should venture on such a splendid undertaking before he is over forty'.[1] These criteria for autobiography generally persisted until recent times, and most serious autobiographies of the next three hundred years conformed to them.
Another autobiography of the period is De vita propria, by the Italian physician and astrologer Gerolamo Cardano (1574).
The earliest known autobiography in English is the early 15th-century Booke of Margery Kempe, describing among other things her pilgrimage to the Holy Land and visit to Rome. The book remained in manuscript and was not published until 1936.
Notable English autobiographies of the seventeenth century include those of Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1643, published 1764) and John Bunyan (Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, (1666)).
A memoir is slightly different in character from an autobiography. While an autobiography typically focuses on the "life and times" of the writer, a memoir has a narrower, more intimate focus on his or her own memories, feelings and emotions. Memoirs have often been written by politicians or military leaders as a way to record and publish an account of their public exploits. The English Civil War (1642–1651) provoked a number of examples of this genre, including works by Sir Edmund Ludlow and Sir John Reresby. French examples from the same period include the memoirs of Cardinal de Retz (1614–1679) and the Duc de Saint-Simon (1675–1755).
Notable 18th-century autobiographies in English include those of Edward Gibbon and Benjamin Franklin. Following the trend of Romanticism, which greatly emphasised the role and the nature of the individual, and in the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, a more intimate form of autobiography, exploring the subject's emotions, came into fashion. An English example is William Hazlitt's Liber Amoris (1823), a painful examination of the writer's love-life.
With the rise of education, cheap newspapers and cheap printing, modern concepts of fame and celebrity began to develop, and the beneficiaries of this were not slow to cash in on this by producing autobiographies. It became the expectation — rather than the exception — that those in the public eye should write about themselves — not only writers such as Charles Dickens (who also incorporated autobiographical elements in his novels) and Anthony Trollope, but politicians (e.g. Henry Brooks Adams), philosophers (e.g. John Stuart Mill), churchmen such as Cardinal Newman, and entertainers such as P. T. Barnum. Increasingly, in accordance with romantic taste, these accounts also began to deal, amongst other topics, with aspects of childhood and upbringing — far removed from the principles of 'Cellinian' autobiography.
Diaries were originally written for personal reference, but the successful publication of the diaries of the English 17th-century civil servant and bon viveur Samuel Pepys in 1825 (transcribed from his manuscript in shorthand) drew attention to the possibilities of the diary as a form of autobiography in its own right. From the 20th century onwards, diary publication became a popular vehicle for politicians seeking vindication. Notable British examples have included the diaries of Richard Crossman and Tony Benn.
Victims and opponents of totalitarian regimes have been able to present striking critiques of these regimes through autobiographical accounts of their oppression. Among the more renowned of such works are the writings of Primo Levi, one of many personal accounts of the Shoah. Similarly, there are many works detailing atrocities and malevolence of Communist regimes (e.g., Nadezhda Mandelstam's Hope against Hope. From the Bed-Stuy, New York area;
From the 17th century onwards, "scandalous memoirs" by supposed libertines, serving a public taste for titillation, have been frequently published. Typically pseudonymous, they were (and are) largely works of fiction written by ghostwriters.
So-called "autobiographies" of modern professional athletes and media celebrities—and to a lesser extent about politicians, generally written by a ghostwriter, are routinely published. Some celebrities, such as Naomi Campbell, admit to not having read their "autobiographies."[citation needed]
Until recent years, few people without some genuine claim to fame wrote or published autobiographies for the general public. With the critical and commercial success in the United States of such memoirs as Angela's Ashes and The Color of Water, however, more and more people have been encouraged to try their hand at this genre.
This trend has also encouraged fake autobiographies, particularly those associated with 'misery lit,' where the writer has allegedly suffered from being a part of a dysfunctional family, or from social problems, or political repression.
The term "fictional autobiography" has been coined to define novels about a fictional character written as though the character were writing their own biography, of which Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders, is an early example. Charles Dickens' David Copperfield is another such classic, and J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye is a well-known modern example of fictional autobiography. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is yet another example of fictional autobiography, as noted on the front page of the original version. The term may also apply to works of fiction purporting to be autobiographies of real characters, e.g., Stephen Marlowe's The Death and Life of Miguel de Cervantes.
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
| Translations: Autobiography |
Dansk (Danish)
n. - autobiografi, selvbiografi
Nederlands (Dutch)
autobiografie
Français (French)
n. - autobiographie
Deutsch (German)
n. - Autobiographie
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - αυτοβιογραφία
Italiano (Italian)
autobiografia
Português (Portuguese)
n. - autobiografia (f)
Русский (Russian)
автобиография
Español (Spanish)
n. - autobiografía
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - självbiografi
中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
自传
中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 自傳
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) السيره الذاتيه وتعني قصه حياة الكاتب
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - סיפור תולדות החיים של המספר, אוטוביוגרפיה
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