Women And The Autobiographical Impulse

Forming a critical introduction to the history of women's autobiography from the mid 18th-century to the present, this book analyses the most important changes in women's autobiography, exploring their motivation, context, style, and the role of life experiences. Caine effortlessly segues across three centuries of history: from the emergence of the 'modern autobiography' in the 18th-century which laid bare the scandalous lives of 'fallen women', to the literary and suffragist autobiographies of the 19th-century to the establishment of feminist publishers in the 20th century and the taboo-shattering autobiographies they produced. The result is a much-needed history, one which provides a different way of thinking about the trajectory of genre information. Caine's compelling study fills an important gap in the genre of autobiography, by embracing a wide range of women and offering an extensive discussion of the autobiographies of women across the 19th and 20th centuries, making it ideal for classroom use.

An overview of women's autobiography, providing historical background and contemporary criticism along with selections from a range of autobiographies by women. It seeks to provide a broad introduction to the major questions dominating autobiographical scholarship today.

Long (sociology, Syracuse U.) seeks other methods for women's autobiography than the traditional Great Man and masculine discourse. She says it must reflect female subjectivity and provide space for the distinctive nature of women's experience. The one she finds is built on the past two decades of feminist methodology. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The book focuses on the variety of forms twentieth-century autobiographical writing by women has taken and looks closely at the different theoretical issues and critical interpretations they have generated. The author argues that the problem posed by a feminist criticism of autobiography is how to avoid speaking for or about the very discourses through which women themselves are attempting to speak. How can theory resist appropriating the female subject at the very point of her emergence?

Examining novelists, bloggers, and other creators of new media, this study focuses on autobiography by American black women since 1980, including Audre Lorde, Jill Nelson, and Janet Jackson. As Curtis argues, these women used embodiment as a strategy of drawing the audience into visceral identification with them and thus forestalling stereotypes.

Autobiography raises a vital issue in feminist critical theory today: the imperative need to situate the female subject. Life/Lines, a collection of essays on women's autobiography, attempts to meet this need.

This collection of twelve essays discusses the principles and practices of women's autobiographical writing in the United States, England, and France from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Employing feminist and poststructuralist methodologies, t

Focus on the works of Harriet Jacobs, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Gertrude Stein, Mary McCarthy, Maxine Hong Kingston, and others.