Historicizing Life-Writing and Egodocuments in Early Modern Europe
Historicizing Life-Writing and Egodocuments in Early Modern Europe

Author: James R. Farr

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-01-12

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 3030824837

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This volume historicizes the study of life-writing and egodocuments, focusing on early modern European reflections on the self, self-fashioning, and identity. Life-writing and the study of egodocuments currently tend to be viewed as separate fields, yet the individual as a purposive social actor provides significant common ground and offers a vehicle, both theoretical and practical, for a profitable synthesis of the two in a historical context. Echoing scholars from a wide-range of disciplines who recognize the uncertainty of the nature of the self, these essays question the notion of the autonomous self and the attendant idea of continuous identity unfolding in a unified personality. Instead, they suggest that the early modern self was variable and unstable, and can only be grasped by exploring selves situated in specific historical and social/cultural contexts and revealed through the wide range of historical documents considered here. The three sections of the volume consider: first, the theoretical contexts of understanding egodocuments in early modern Europe; then, the practical ways egodocuments from the period may be used for writing life-histories today; and finally, a wider range of historical documents that might be added to what are usually seen as egodocuments.

Writing Mobile Lives, 1500–1700
Writing Mobile Lives, 1500–1700

Author: Eva Johanna Holmberg

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2024-04-04

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 1009190504

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This Element develops and showcases a new methodological framework in which to study the connections between early modern travel writing and life- and self-writing. Turning the scholarly focus in the study of travel writing from eye-witnessing and proto-ethnography of foreign lands to the 'fashioned' and portrayed selves and 'inner worlds' of travellers – personal memory, autobiographical practices, and lived yet often heavily mediated travel experiences – it opens up perspectives to travel writing in its many modes, that extend both before and after 'lived' travels into their many pre- and afterlives in textual form. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Redreaming the Renaissance
Redreaming the Renaissance

Author: Mary Lindemann

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2024-05-17

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1644533383

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Redreaming the Renaissance seeks to remedy the dearth of conversations between scholars of history and literary studies by building on the pathbreaking work of Guido Ruggiero to explore the cross-fertilization between these two disciplines, using the textual world of the Italian Renaissance as proving ground. In this volume, these disciplines blur, as they did for early moderns, who did not always distinguish between the historical and literary significance of the texts they read and produced. Literature here is broadly conceived to include not only belles lettres, but also other forms of artful writing that flourished in the period, including philosophical writings on dreams and prophecy; life-writing; religious debates; menu descriptions and other food writing; diaries, news reports, ballads, and protest songs; and scientific discussions. The twelve essays in this collection examine the role that the volume’s dedicatee has played in bringing the disciplines of history and literary studies into provocative conversation, as well as the methodology needed to sustain and enrich this conversation.

The Flight of Icarus
The Flight of Icarus

Author:

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 1998-08

Total Pages: 510

ISBN-13: 0804764123

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Exploring autobiographical texts written by European urban craftsmen from the 15th to the 18th centuries, this book studies memoirs, diaries, family chronicles, travel narratives, and other forms of personal writings from Spain, France, Italy, Germany, and England. In the process, it reveals the significance of written self-expression in early modern popular culture.

Controlling Time and Shaping the Self
Controlling Time and Shaping the Self

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2011-06-22

Total Pages: 559

ISBN-13: 9004207589

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This book gives answers to questions surrounding the rise of autobiographical writing from the sixteenth to the twentieth century by analyzing texts varying from the time of the Spanish Inquisition to post-war Japan.

Experiments in Life-Writing
Experiments in Life-Writing

Author: Lucia Boldrini

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-10-24

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 331955414X

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This volume examines innovative intersections of life-writing and experimental fiction in the 20th and 21st centuries, bringing together scholars and practicing biographers from several disciplines (Modern Languages, English and Comparative Literature, Creative Writing). It covers a broad range of biographical, autobiographical, and hybrid practices in a variety of national literatures, among them many recent works: texts that test the ground between fact and fiction, that are marked by impressionist, self-reflexive and intermedial methods, by their recourse to myth, folklore, poetry, or drama as they tell a historical character’s story. Between them, the essays shed light on the broad range of auto/biographical experimentation in modern Europe and will appeal to readers with an interest in the history and politics of form in life-writing: in the ways in which departures from traditional generic paradigms are intricately linked with specific views of subjectivity, with questions of personal, communal, and national identity. The Introduction of this book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.

The Book World of Early Modern Europe
The Book World of Early Modern Europe

Author: Arthur der Weduwen

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-09-26

Total Pages: 639

ISBN-13: 900451810X

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This collection of essays, commissioned in honour of Andrew Pettegree, presents original contributions on the Reformation, communication and the book in early modern Europe. Together, the essays reflect on Pettegree’s ground-breaking influence on these fields, and offer a comprehensive survey of the state of current scholarship.

Writing Life Writing
Writing Life Writing

Author: Paul John Eakin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-04

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 9780367515775

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Why do we endlessly tell the stories of our lives? And why do others pay attention when we do? The essays collected here address these questions, focusing on three different but interrelated dimensions of life writing. The first section, Narrative, argues that narrative is not only a literary form but also a social and cultural practice, and finally a mode of cognition and an expression of our most basic physiology. The next section, Life Writing: Historical Forms, makes the case for the historical value of the subjectivity recorded in ego-documents. The essays in the final section, Autobiography Now, identify primary motives for engaging in self-narration in an age characterized by digital media and quantum cosmology.

Early Modern French Autobiography
Early Modern French Autobiography

Author: Nicolae Alexandru Virastau

Publisher: Egodocuments and History

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 9789004424418

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This book offers a survey of the constitution of the French memoir tradition, and explores in detail the works of four representative authors: Philippe de Commynes, Louise de Savoie, Philippe de Cheverny, and François de Bassompierre. Works of self-writing were usually printed under the title of "memoirs" and have been often considered a uniform genre. These early forms of self-writing were in fact highly heterogenous works at the crossroads of multiple genres, from the account book to the astrological diary. Their writing, printing, and circulation challenge modern notions of autobiographical genres: their authorship is often questionable and collective, and they tended to be compiled in large collections for political ends, without regard to the authors' intention.