Arch's (Authorizing the Past; English, Michigan State Univ.) well-supported thesis is that before the 1810s in North America, people who wrote about themselves, Benjamin Franklin for example, were not accurately called "autobiographers," in the current sense of the word. What they wrote might best be described as "self-biographies," because the self they depicted was not unique but in some sense a depersonalized, representative example. According to the author, between 1780 and 1830 the conceptual transformation of the "self" took place in this country. By the early 19th century, the familiar idea of the personal, individual self, separate from all others, had all but replaced the traditional average self in American writing. Arch exemplifies this fitful progression with a long line of familiar and unfamiliar "self-biographies" and "autobiographies": Franklin's own so-called autobiography; Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer; Alexander Graydon's Memoirs of a Life; Benjamin Rush's 1789 Medical Inquiries and Observations; Ethan Allen's Narrative; and the writings of the sentimental Stephen Burroughs and the "singular" inventor John Fitch. This brief but convincing volume is highly recommended for all academic libraries. Charles C. Nash, Cottey Coll., Nevada, MO
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Description
An analysis of the foundations of autobiography in America.
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