Suzanne Nalbantian provides a precise and highly original basis to identify literary art with her novel approach to autobiography. Re-examining Proust, Joyce, and Woolf, with Nin in their wake, Nalbantian discerns models of a hybrid genre characterized by common aesthetics.
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"'A rich contribution to the study of autobiography." - James Olney
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
More Genre-Bashing,
This review is from: Aesthetic Autobiography: From Life to Art in the Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Anais Nin (Paperback)
While Nalbantian has veiled it in "neutral" academic prose and by using the particular cases of a few famous writers, her argument is just another example of memoir-hating. While I think it's an interesting exercise to try to trace author experience through fiction, doing so in a way that bashes an entire other category of writing should certainly make us suspicious. And while I agree that many readers are obsessed with memoir for all the wrong reasons, there are memoirists who do more than regurgitate facts, who actually write in literarily complex ways. The search for a pithy, simple thesis has unfortunately led S.N. astray in what might otherwise have been very interesting work.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thought provoking and insightful...,
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This review is from: Aesthetic Autobiography: From Life to Art in the Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Anais Nin (Paperback)
Aesthetic Autobiography is a fascinating study of the transmutation of life fact into fiction. Nalbantian's basic premise is that one's fictionalization of one's own life reveals more about an individual than an individual's earnest attempt at self documentation by way of a "memoir." The first chapter is an analysis of autobiography proper; in the second chapter Nalbantian introduces theories of "aesthetic autobiography," and in the subsequent chapters she relates her model of a shared aesthetics to the giants of twentieth-century autobiography. For example, writers of aesthetic autobiography share a concentration on a place, a childhood memory, and a beloved family member. In additon, they each utilize a concrete element as an anchor in time. It is a very creative work, and any individual interested in the creative process, the transmuation of life fact into fiction, will find this study essential and illuminating.
0 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
How much is too much?,
This review is from: Aesthetic Autobiography: From Life to Art in the Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Anais Nin (Paperback)
The constant edification of authors reaches a sickening degree when their lives are marched out like so much cannon fodder. Are they interesting people? Undoubtedly. Worthy of print? Surely. Worthy of endless reams of print that never stops? You get the idea
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First Sentence:
Formal autobiography has always been assumed to be a genre of its own, even though it is said that it was not until 1809 that the English writer Robert Southey coined the word in the Quarterly Review. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
aesthetic autobiography, aesthetic autobiographies, standard autobiographies, autobiographical novelists, autobiography criticism, next quotation, roman fleuve, autobiographical writers, des jeunes filles, various personae, autobiographical fiction Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Virginia Woolf, Stephen Hero, Lily Briscoe, Roger Fry, Portrait of the Artist, Stephen Dedalus, Great War, Julia Stephen, Saint Augustine, Ballast Office, New York, Contre Sainte-Beuve, Talland House, House of Love, Children of the Albatross, James Joyce, Martello Tower, North Richmond Street, Septimus Smith, Vita Sackville-West, Baron de Charlus, Gabriel Conroy, Gilbert the Bad, Leslie Stephen, Marcel Proust New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Formal autobiography has always been assumed to be a genre of its own, even though it is said that it was not until 1809 that the English writer Robert Southey coined the word in the Quarterly Review. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
aesthetic autobiography, aesthetic autobiographies, standard autobiographies, autobiographical novelists, autobiography criticism, next quotation, roman fleuve, autobiographical writers, des jeunes filles, various personae, autobiographical fiction Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Virginia Woolf, Stephen Hero, Lily Briscoe, Roger Fry, Portrait of the Artist, Stephen Dedalus, Great War, Julia Stephen, Saint Augustine, Ballast Office, New York, Contre Sainte-Beuve, Talland House, House of Love, Children of the Albatross, James Joyce, Martello Tower, North Richmond Street, Septimus Smith, Vita Sackville-West, Baron de Charlus, Gabriel Conroy, Gilbert the Bad, Leslie Stephen, Marcel Proust New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 100
books:
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4
books
cite this book:
- To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf on 28 pages
- Mrs Dalloway (Worlds Classics) by Virginia Woolf on 22 pages
- Stephen Hero by James Joyce on 16 pages
- Novel Of Future by Anais Nin on 13 pages
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism) by James Joyce on 10 pages
See all 100 books this book cites
- Anaï¿1/2s Nin, Fictionality and Femininity (Oxford English Monographs) by Helen Tookey in Front Matter
- Textual Responses to German Unification: Processing Historical and Social Change in Literature and Film by Carol Anne Costabile-Heming on page 104
- Texts: Contemporary Cultural Texts and Critical Approaches by Peter Childs on page 154
- The Cambridge Companion to Berlioz (Cambridge Companions to Music) by Peter Bloom in Back Matter
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