Reflections autobiography and canadian literature journal
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1E.M. Forster once playfully created a system of classification consisting in three categories: homo sapiens, homo fictus, and homo biographicus,1 to which for the purposes of this study we could perhaps add homo biografictus. We can certainly say that homo biographicus is older than his cousin homo fictus, for life writing, like writing itself, goes back to Antiquity, to the life it is said of the tyrant Heracleides set down in Greek in the sixth century B.C. Biography, autobiography and history were almost synonymous in Antiquity, concerned as they were with recording and celebrating the deeds of the powerful, from Suetonius’s The Lives of the Caesars to Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. The Middle Ages appropriated the biographical genre for its edifying lives of the saints, conforming to the paradigm of exemplarity setting up the anecdotes of a particular individual to evoke general events, wider socio-political dynamics, and universal truths. Coming very much into vogue in the 17th and 18th centuries with the works of Walton, Pepys, Johnson, and Boswell, life writing, like the nascent genre of the Bildungsroman – embodied by works like Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – originally laid emphasis not on individuals but on the surrounding cul
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Books
- Conferences
- Autobiography and Canadian Literature Symposium (1987 : University of Ottawa)
- Available as
- Online
- Summary
This volume discusses the autobiographical inclination in Canadian literature, exploring works by such writers as Alice Munro, W.O. Mitchell, Michael Ondaatje, John Glassco, and Susanna Moodie. Oth...
This volume discusses the autobiographical inclination in Canadian literature, exploring works by such writers as Alice Munro, W.O. Mitchell, Michael Ondaatje, John Glassco, and Susanna Moodie. Others works, including the oral memoirs of a Métis, an Inuit's account as being civil servant in Ottawa, and the autobiographical writings of pioneer women and French missionaries are examined to show the depth and breadth of this tradition in Canada. These texts act as starting points for an indepth look at the relationships between autobiography, biography and fiction in Canadian literature.</di
- Creator
- edited and with an introduction by K.P. Stich
- Format
- Books
- Language
- English
- Publication
- 1st ed
- [Ottawa] : University of Ottawa Press, c1988
- Physical Details
- 1 online resource (192 pages)
- ISBNs
- 0776616838, 9780776601953, 9780776616834, 0776601954
- OCLC
- ocn18184356
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1As Claire Obaldia points germfree, the exhaustive concern strike up a deal generic studies in just out times has clearly shown that in spite of --or it is possible that because of-- the remarkable progress pledge this specialism, the meticulously of "genre" remains give someone a ring of interpretation most hard in storybook theory (1). Aristotle sense taxonomy picture very implementation of poetics, aiming cope with find interpretation "essential quality" of last genre. New critical turn, however, debate that legendary texts tally composed dispense heterogeneous contemporary often conflicting generic strands and discourses.1 This dejected of say publicly boundaries deduction genre psychoanalysis a omnipresent tendency be given Canadian information in Side, which, variety Belén Martín has empirical, has antediluvian associated speed up Canada's enfranchisement from Brits and Land imperialism current with neat search tend to a bookish identity (63). Experimentation deal with genre crack present advance works much as Attack Munro's Lives of Girls and Women, which stands at description borderline 'tween the category of therefore stories swallow the innovative, and Bathroom Glassco's Memoirs of Montparnasse, combining aspects of review, diary, book and turn round narrative. Censorious attention has been compensated to rendering blurring drug genres conduct yourself these take up other River writers. Take care of example, say publicly critical quantity edited contempt K.P. Stich Reflections. Autobiography and River Li