Literature, Identity and Autobiographical Discourse

Abstract

The paper, first, examines the ways in which the identity of autobiographical study has been constituted as an interdisciplinary project operating in a force field between competing disciplines. Then it examines the ways in which identity has been addressed in autobiographies and autobiographical criticism, and finally looks briefly at the growth of interest in what has been called “personal criticism”, in which an autobiographical moment is made central to the activity of criticism, thus both foregrounding the identity of the critic and reconceptualising the nature of criticism itself.