Autobiography: Installment No.3
ESSAY 3
Writing an autobiography involves a matching up of a specific plot-structure with a set of historical events. The autobiographer wishes to endow these events with a particular meaning. Some writers see this process as "essentially a literary, that is to say, fiction-making operation." The document, the autobiography, is still a historical narrative. It is one of the ways a culture has of making sense of both personal and public events. For it is not the events of a life that are reproduced through the writer's description; rather, it is a direction to think about these events, a charging of the events with "different emotional valences," that the writer produces. Of course, a writer does not like to see his work as a translation of "facts" into "fiction." But the crisis in both historical thought and in the writing of autobiography may be illumined by the insights gained from this perspective.
The ordering of events in a temporal sequence does not provide any necessary explanation of why the events occurred; for a history, an autobiography, is not only about events, it is also about possible sets of relationships, only some of which are immanent in those events. For the most part they exist in the mind of the writer and the language he or she uses. Hayden White argues that "if there is an element of the historical in all poetry, there is an element of poetry in every historical account." History is made sense of in the same way that the poet or novelist tries to make sense of it. The unfamiliar and mysterious is made familiar. Both the real and the imagined are subjected to a process aimed at making sense of reality. For this reason history often appears fictionalized and poetry often appears like reality, like history. Writers of poetry and fiction, says Hayden, impose formal coherence on the world in the same way writers of history do.
Such a view, if taken seriously, would go a long way to freeing historians from being captive of ideological preconceptions. Drawing historiography closer to its origins in literary sensibility, in the literary imagination, may help to increase understanding. For an increase in facts does not necessarily bring understanding. Chronicles of events, the sense of 'what really happened,' types of configurations of events, the emplottment of sequences of events, are determined as much by what facts are put in as what are left out and by the extent to which the writer can engage in constant currection and revision, in tireless seeking out of new information.
Aristotle saw poetry as unified, intelligible and based on the subordination of the part to the ends of the whole. History on the other hand was organized around continuity and succession, a congeries of events and is not intelligible in the same way as poetry is. He associated history with the unexpected, the uncontrollable, the unsystematic. Poetry he saw as part of an ordered and coherent schema. Poetry was, to Aristotle, a more serious, a more philosophical, business than history. It speaks of universals; history of particulars.
About the Author:
Ron Price
2.1 Articles and Reviews: Journals
1. * "A History of the Baha'i Faith in the Northern Territory: 1947-1997," Northern Lights, 25 Installments, 2000-2002.
2. * Periodic Articles, poems and letters in "Newsletters," Regional Teaching Committees of the NSA of the Baha'is of Australia Inc., 1971-2001.
3. * Periodic Articles, poems and letters, Baha'i Canada and The Australian Baha'i Bulletin, 1971-2001.
4. * "Memorials of the Faithful," Baha'i Studies Review, September 2001.
5. * "Review of Two Chapbooks: The Poetry of Tony Lee," Arts Dialogue, June 2001.
6. * "Asia and the Lost Poems: The Poetry of Anthony Lee," Art 'n Soul, a Website for Poets and Poetry, January 2000.
7. * "The Passionate Artist," Australian Baha'i Studies, Vol.2, 2000.
8. * "Memorials of the Faithful," Australian Baha'i Studies, Vol.1, No.2, 1999, p.102.
9. * "Poetry of Ron Price: An Overview," ABS Newsletter, No.38, September 1997.
10. * "Thomas a Kempis, Taherzadeh and the Day of Judgement," Forum, Vol.3, No 1, 1994, pp.1-3.
MORE RESOURCES:
Hunwick, Michigan Writing Cinderella Story College Hockey News Hunwick, who is writing one of this season's bigger Cinderella stories, led Michigan to a 5-2 upset of top-seeded Miami, his fifth consecutive win, ... |
Oscar-Winner Christoph Waltz Writing/Directing Rom-Com 'Up And Away' MTV.com (blog) Now that you've become a fan of Christoph Waltz through his Oscar-winning performance as Hans Landa in "Inglourious Basterds," can the Austrian actor woo ... |
 findingDulcinea | Using Computer Programs to Improve Student Writing findingDulcinea Students at all levels across the country are struggling to develop writing skills, making some educators turn to Web-based programs for ... |
 USA Today | Must schools change how writing teachers are taught? USA Today LOUISVILLE — "I was incredibly well trained to teach college writing, but only one course at a time. ... When Writing Class Moves Online |
Juliet Gardiner on writing non-fiction The Guardian Lots of the rules for writing non-fiction are just the same as they are for writing fiction ("Put one word after another", 20 February). ... |
 MovieMaker Magazine | Bryan Cranston Directs MovieMaker Magazine I attribute that to Vince Gilligan and our writing staff; they're just superb. They continue to push the boundaries while staying within plausibility—a ... |
Writing Seminar at Writing-Service.org: A Bridge across the Chasm of ... MichiganPR.net (press release) To prove the contrary, the custom writing company of Writing-Services.org decided to hold a seminar on various aspects of writing where university ... A New Bridge between Europe and the US: Custom-Essay.org Holds a Writing Seminar |
Reading and Writing and 'Rithmetic Huffington Post (blog) "The stumbling way in which even the ablest of the scientists in every generation have had to fight through thickets of erroneous observations, ... |
 Pittsburgh Post Gazette | Two men charged in graffiti writing Pittsburgh Post Gazette Police have filed charges against two men accused of writing gang graffiti in Pittsburgh causing more than $4000 in damage. Stephen Wadlow of Brookline and ... |
Midland workshop offers tips on writing memoirs The Saginaw News - MLive.com MIDLAND — A workshop on writing a personal essay or memoir is set from 7 pm to 9 pm Tuesday, March 23, in the Grace A. Dow Memorial Library ... |
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