Lejeune's definition of autobiography is in terms of text and seems a bit limited. It is interesting that he excludes memoirs, journal/diary, and the self-portrait or essay. These seem to me to have autobiographical value. The reason for a diary to be excluded is because it is not written with a retrospective point of view of the narrative. What? Writing a diary usually records the events of someone's life after they happened. If someone records the events of the day, they necessarily happened before the writing occurred. While Lejeune addresses the exclusion of poetry in "The Autobiographical Pact (bis)" in addition to some of the weaknesses of his Autobiographical Pact, I felt that there was more that needed to be addressed.
The other issue that I had with Lejeune was his identity of the author. He stated that an autobiography written by an author using a pseudonym could still be considered an autobiography. However, later he states that the author and the narrator share the same name. Other issues of identity occur when the author is unknown. Lejeune decides that an unidentified author combined with an unnamed protagonist cannot be autobiography. I do not think that we can necessarily exclude that possibility, although it would be difficult or impossible to determine whether it was truly an autobiography.
One last issue I had was when Lejeune stated that the difference between biography and autobiography, "lies in the rather paradoxical fact that this accuracy has no essential importance" (22). This is different from Bruss who wrote about the importance of the truth-value. Perhaps I am misreading this or misunderstanding Lejeune. However, I think that capturing a person's life events with accuracy would influence the integrity of the autobiography.
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2 comments:
I commented on some other blogs about what is autobiographical. I think that you bring up a great point about the arts and their ability to be autobiographical.
From an art historical perspective (which you know all about) I think we could find some great examples of how the arts, in all forms -- film, painting, sculpture, etc. provide us with more insight into someone's life than perhaps anything else. I commented on Jamecca's blog about her narrow interpretation of the autobiographical. I stated that Antoni may not have been the nest example but that the arts in general more often than not and especially at the present tell us a story about the person and their life and their work.
I find it interesting that people can't see the potential and ability of other "forms" or "modes" to hold autobiographical potential or ability, especially when I think that trend for the autobiographical is moving more and more in the direction of wide and varied interpretation.
I agree that Lejeune is sometimes a bit constrictive in his definition regarding the autobiographical pact. One thing to remember is that the autobiographical pact defines what is an autobiography and not what is autobiographical. Certainly memoirs and journals are autobiographical just not autobiographies.
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