Memory and Narrative: The Weave of Life-Writing

Memory and Narrative presents an elegant, authoritative account of how life-writing has changed over time to arrive at its present form. James Olney, one of the most distinguished scholars of autobiography, tells the story of an evolving literary form that originated in the autobiographical writings of St. Augustine, underwent profound changes in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's life-writing trilogy, and found a momentary conclusion in the work of Samuel Beckett.

James Olney is the Voorhies Professor of English and professor of French and Italian at Louisiana State University. He is author, editor, or coeditor of eleven books, most recently The Language(s) of Poetry: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins. He is also coeditor of The Southern Review.