An edition of When memory speaks (1998)

When memory speaks

reflections on autobiography

1st ed.
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Last edited by MARC Bot
July 13, 2024 | History
An edition of When memory speaks (1998)

When memory speaks

reflections on autobiography

1st ed.
  • 0 Ratings
  • 2 Want to read
  • 0 Currently reading
  • 0 Have read

Jill Ker Conway looks into the modern memoir: the forms and styles it assumes, and the strikingly different ways in which men and women respectively tend to understand and present their lives.

In a narrative rich with evocations of memoirists over the centuries - from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and George Sand to W. E. B. Du Bois, Virginia Woolf, Frank McCourt and Katharine Graham - the author suggests why it is that we are so drawn to the reading of autobiography, and she illuminates the cultural assumptions behind the ways in which we talk about ourselves.

Conway traces the narrative patterns typically found in autobiographies by men to the tale of the classical Greek hero and his epic journey of adventure.

She shows how this configuration evolved, in memoirs, into the passionate romantic struggling against the conventions of society, into the frontier hero battling the wilderness, into self-made men overcoming economic obstacles to create an invention or a fortune - or, more recently, into a quest for meaning, for an understandable past, for an ethnic identity.

In contrast, she sees the designs that women commonly employ for their memoirs as evolving from the writings of the mystics - such as Dame Julian of Norwich or St. Teresa of Avila - about their relationship with an all-powerful God. As against the male autobiographer's expectation of power over his fate, we see the woman memoirist again and again believing that she lacks command of her destiny, and tending to censor her own story.

Publish Date
Publisher
Alfred A. Knopf
Language
English
Pages
205

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: When memory speaks
When memory speaks: exploring the art of autobiography
1999, Vintage Books, Vintage, Knopf, Alfred A. Knopf
in English - 1st Vintage Books ed.
Cover of: When memory speaks
When memory speaks: reflections on autobiography
1998, Alfred A. Knopf
in English - 1st ed.

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Book Details


Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references (p. [185]-191) and index.

Published in
New York

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
808/.06692
Library of Congress
CT25 .C68 1998

The Physical Object

Pagination
205 p. ;
Number of pages
205

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL701131M
ISBN 10
0679445935
LCCN
97049452
Library Thing
148113
Goodreads
1713658

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July 13, 2024 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
August 4, 2020 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
March 2, 2020 Edited by MARC Bot remove fake subjects
November 7, 2011 Edited by ImportBot import new book
December 10, 2009 Created by WorkBot add works page