Writing Lives: Autobiography in Fiction and Memoir

This course introduces students to a range of genres of life writing, including autobiography, memoir, autobiographical fiction, graphic memoir, testimony and biography. The course will begin with the 18th century origins of life writing, but the focus will be on 20th and 21st century literature. Students will become familiar with critical concepts, terms and approaches used to analyse life narratives, and with debates relating to authenticity, identity, truth, memory and self-representation. Special attention will be paid gender and sexuality, place and memory, Indigenous life writing, and the representation of traumatic personal and historical events in life narrative. The class will engage with critical readings on life narrative, including biography, diaries and journals. Confessional and testimonial paradigms, and the socio-cultural contexts in which authors deploy particular rhetorical modes of address will also be considered.