Course Objective: The aim of this course is that students complete a survey of the genre of autobiography in its variant forms and appearances and develop professional papers that incorporate autobiography into their ongoing writing projects.
Course Description: The marked shifts in style evident in the texts of autobiography across its history will serve as focus for the Stylistics course. Because of the unique relationship between style and voice, autobiography works well in our efforts to define and redefine style and to chart its rising and falling fortunes in the history of rhetoric.
We will examine how autobiography problematizes the concepts of style and voice as its narrator is both subject and object, present and absent, and as it uses style to reveal and conceal the autobiographical "I." We will also examine how autobiography alters the concepts of style and voice as modern and postmodern forms put autobiography at the service of theory. Finally, we will investigate how some feminist theorists reject the erasure of the autobiographical voice and exploit style to restore voice to marginalized persons and groups. Most importantly, we will read some great autobiographies from diverse cultures and time periods.
Course Papers:
Two papers 10-12 pages each. Paper One will be a compendium of short papers. For each of the so-called "periods" of autobiography you will prepare an analysis that compares stylistic features of two of the assigned texts--five two-page papers. One of the five will be presented in class.
Paper Two will develop a thesis from a reading on an autobiography of choice. Papers will be presented in class. All resource material must be carefully documented.
Course Grades: Grades will be earned as follows:
1/3 class participation and attendance
1/3 Paper One
1/3 Paper Two
Course Readings
Books for required reading are in the bookstore and on reserve in the library. Two chapters from my forthcoming book, Autobiography, Narrative of Transformation, are available in the copy center.
Bookstore
Marcus Aurelius. Meditations. tr. Farquharson. Oxford,1989.
St. Augustine. Confessions. tr. Warner. Mentor, 1963.
Montaigne. Essays. tr. Frame. St. Martin, 1963.
Lady Nijo. Confessions. Stanford, 1973.
Rousseau. Confessions. tr. Cohen, Penguin, 1953.
Darwin. Autobiography. W.W. Norton, 1969.
Stein. Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Vintage, 1990.
Barthes. Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes. tr. Howard. Noonday, 1977.
Kingston. Woman Warrior. Vintage, 1989.
Martinez. Parrot in the Oven. 1996.
On Library Reserve
Sappho. Selected Poems. tr. Barnard. U. California, 1958.
Isocrates. Antidosis. tr. Norlin. vol.2. Heinemann, 1961.
Nehemiah. The Book of Nehemiah. King James.
Agrippina. Memoirs in Tacitus, Annals. In Fantham. Women in Classical World.
Oxford, 1994. 304-312.
Perpetua. Prison Diary. In Dronke. Women Writers in the Middle Ages.
Cambridge, 1984. 1-17.
Sor Juana. La Respuesta. tr. Peden. Lime Rock Press, 1987.
Derrida. Jacques Derrida. tr. Bennington. U of Chicago, 1993.
Kadi. Food for Our Grandmothers. South End Press, 1994.
Rhetoric Seminars
Rhetoric, Composition, Critical Theory HP & Program
The ENGLISH HOME PAGE
Carolyn Barros's HP.