Abstract | Keywords | Export | Availability | Bookmark

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

In 'The Limits of Autobiography', Leigh Gilmore analyzes texts that depict trauma by combining elements of autobiography, fiction, biography, history, and theory in ways that challenge the constraints of autobiography. Astute and compelling readings of works by Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Dorothy Allison, Mikal Gilmore, Jamaica Kincaid, and Jeanette Winterson explore how each poses the questions 'How have I lived?' and 'How will I live?' in relation to the social and psychic forms within which trauma emerges. First published in 2001, this edition of one of the foundational texts in trauma studies includes a new preface by the author that assesses the gravitational pull between life writing and trauma in the twenty-first century, a tension that continues to produce innovative and artful means of confronting kinship, violence, and self-representation.

Self in literature. --- First person narrative. --- Winterson, Jeanette, --- Kincaid, Jamaica --- Allison, Dorothy, --- Gilmore, Mikal. --- Criticism and interpretation. --- life writing, trauma and autobiography, literature and autobiography, self-representation of trauma, limit-cases, representing trauma, trauma and life writing, literature and trauma studies. --- American prose literature --- Autobiography. --- English prose literature --- Autobiographical fiction --- History and criticism.