Monday, July 6, 2009

The Encyclopedia of Life Writing


Jolly, Margaretta. Encyclopedia of Life Writing: Autobiographical and Biographical Forms. London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001.

I mentioned once before that I'm quite interested in this massive tome and what it means for professional roles that I might take on. I guess the main issue here is to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of putting my readings in Chinese literature into a broader "world literature" context.

For now, this will be the notes page for my occasional readings in this encyclopedia. I'll do my best to be a more interrogating reader, and to bring in some of the objections to world literature that I've heard but failed to note carefully before.

China: to the 19th Century (Wu, 206-8) "If biography in various guises constitutes probably the largest component of Chinese writings, Chinese autobiography is by comparison minuscule." Li Qingzhao, Li Zhi, Wang Jie, Mao Qiling.

Gender (Helena Grice, 359-60) Women have a "relational" self, which leads to more fragmented autobiography; men are individualistic and so produce "seamless narrative." There's something vaguely troubling about this now-standard generalization. Also, is Jade Snow Wong really a decent representative of the Chinese sense of "self"? There is a good list here showing "the recent flourishing autobiographies of transsexuals"

Lesbian and Gay Writings

Xie Bingying (971-2) Zhao Baisheng's entry reminds me that he once said he disagreed with Jolly about some of the Chinese entries here. Remember to ask him for more of that story.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Terms and topics

About Me

My photo
We are all wanderers along the way.