COML0022 - Study of a Theme: Life Writing

The subject of the course is life writing and its genres of autobiography, autofiction, memoir, the diary, and online diaries. Genre theory frames the discussions that focus upon time perspective, the construction of self, issues of truth and fiction and of literary representation of experience, and the relation between private writing and public reading. The examination of these genres follows their literary historical paths, in their social contexts. It traces the transformation of religious confessions of men to secular autobiographies, such as Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions and Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography and their expansion to autobiographical writing of marginalized women as Sally Morgan’s hybrid text My Place. The study of the memoir follows the genre from its medieval traces to modern memoirs, their political utilization, and the influences of market shifts. For autofiction we shall examine Rachel Cusk’s Outline, compared to her memoir Aftermath, Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be, and Natalia Ginzburg’s Family Lexicon. In the history of the diary the analysis focuses on the role of the early canonical diary, as Samuel Pepys’s diary, and its literary function in subsequent diary writings by women and men in times of war and peace, concluding with online diaries.The course assignments will consist of short writing assignments related to the readings and a final paper. There will be no exams.