Memory and Narrative: The Weave of Life-Writing - Hardcover

Olney, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226628167 ISBN 13: 9780226628165

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1999

Synopsis

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.

"This is an elegant work of scholarship." —Jason Berry, Chicago Tribune

"Examines how the fascinating, reciprocal relationship between memory and narrative has evolved over the course of 17 centuries. . . . Olney's work is a valuable companion to his subjects' primary texts." —Booklist

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Winner of the Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award for outstanding books in literary scholarship or criticism

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, as Olney explains, found a momentary conclusion in the work of Samuel Beckett.

About the Author:

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 recentlyThe Language(s) of Poetry: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins. He is also coeditor ofThe Southern Review.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0226628167
• ISBN 13: 9780226628165
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 446