Selfies: autobiographie, autoportrait, autofiction

Undergraduate

A study of three forms of writing about the self and their generic distinctions. Autobiography, a practice of self-understanding deals with the construction of one’s life story across time; self-portraiture does not attempt to rejoin the past by the construction of a self that is temporally constructed. The autoportraitist presents a self apprehended in the present of writing through a montage of disparate images. Autofiction, on the other hand, deals with a form of fictionalized autobiography that uses fiction in the service of the search for self. Subjects to be examined include: rhetoric, politics, history, and gender. Texts: Rousseau, Chateaubriand, Sartre, Beauvoir (autobiographies,); Montaigne, Sevigne, Barthes (autoportraits); Colette, Modiano, Ernaux (autofictions). Not open to students who have received credit for FREN 40 .06.