| Unit name | Writing the Self: Literature and Autobiography |
|---|---|
| Unit code | ENGL20081 |
| Credit points | 30 |
| Level of study | I/5 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
| Unit director | Professor. Bennett |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
Normally the successful completion of appropriate Level 1 English units |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | Department of English |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
This unit will explore texts which take as their topic the life of the writer, focusing on the relationship between writing and life as it is figured in fictions of autobiography. The unit is concerned with ways in which authors represent their own lives in literary texts - whether autobiographical in a conventional sense, fictionalised autobiography, or more loosely based around authors' lives. We will examine a number of key texts published over the last two centuries, including poems and poem-collections, novels, short stories, memoirs, and essays. A consideration of such texts will necessarily lead into questions of the nature of biography and autobiography; the historical development of the autobiographical mode; fiction and history; memory, forgetting and the unconscious; the nature of confession and personal identity; the politics of self-representation; the limits of genre; 'literary' and other writing.
