Description

Book Synopsis
This work is concerned with the `authority'' of autobiography. Couser considers recent critiques of the notion of autobiography as issuing from, determined by, referring to a pre-existing self. He examines the autobiographies of Benjamin Franklin, P. T. Barnum, and Mark Twain and appraises the authority of autobiography in the rather different circumstances of the minority writer: in slave narratives, the Civil War diaries of Mary Chesnut, and contemporary works by Richard Rodriguez and Maxine Hong Kingston. The work treats autobiographical writing as a struggle for literary control over the life of the author, against the constraints of genre, language, and society.

Trade Review
'Altered Egos is a rewarding book with insights about authority, not just in individual texts and authors, but in the genre itself.' Carol J. Singley, The American University, Prose Studies, Vol. 15, No. 2, August 1992

Altered Egos Authority in American Autobiography

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    A Hardback by G. Thomas Couser

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      View other formats and editions of Altered Egos Authority in American Autobiography by G. Thomas Couser

      Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
      Publication Date: 12/14/1989 12:00:00 AM
      ISBN13: 9780195058338, 978-0195058338
      ISBN10: 019505833X
      Also in:
      Literary studies: general

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      This work is concerned with the `authority'' of autobiography. Couser considers recent critiques of the notion of autobiography as issuing from, determined by, referring to a pre-existing self. He examines the autobiographies of Benjamin Franklin, P. T. Barnum, and Mark Twain and appraises the authority of autobiography in the rather different circumstances of the minority writer: in slave narratives, the Civil War diaries of Mary Chesnut, and contemporary works by Richard Rodriguez and Maxine Hong Kingston. The work treats autobiographical writing as a struggle for literary control over the life of the author, against the constraints of genre, language, and society.

      Trade Review
      'Altered Egos is a rewarding book with insights about authority, not just in individual texts and authors, but in the genre itself.' Carol J. Singley, The American University, Prose Studies, Vol. 15, No. 2, August 1992

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