Facts and Fiction in Autobiographical Writing

Catalog description

The course will cover several genres of autobiographical writing. We will read and discuss auto-fiction, bildungsroman, autobiography/memoir, diary fiction, and non-fictive diary. Our texts will include Rachel Cusk's OUTLINE (compared to her memoir AFTERMATH), Natalia Ginzburg's FAMILY LEXICON, Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, Amos Oz's A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS, Pepys's diary as well as conceptual readings. We shall examine the techniques used by the different genres to represent reality and individual experience. And we will ponder the question of whether and how fictive literature is competing against non-fictive literary and visual channels of representing reality, human behavior, and individual experience. There will be one final paper, and short weekly written responses to the assigned readings.