The Rhetorics of Life-writing in Early Modern Europe
Title | The Rhetorics of Life-writing in Early Modern Europe PDF eBook |
Author | Thomas Frederick Mayer |
Publisher | Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press |
Total Pages | 406 |
Release | 1995 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN |
A fascinating survey of biographical genres
Historicizing Life-Writing and Egodocuments in Early Modern Europe
Title | Historicizing Life-Writing and Egodocuments in Early Modern Europe PDF eBook |
Author | James R. Farr |
Publisher | Springer Nature |
Total Pages | 324 |
Release | 2022-01-12 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 3030824837 |
This volume historicizes the study of life-writing and egodocuments, focusing on early modern European reflections on the self, self-fashioning, and identity. Life-writing and the study of egodocuments currently tend to be viewed as separate fields, yet the individual as a purposive social actor provides significant common ground and offers a vehicle, both theoretical and practical, for a profitable synthesis of the two in a historical context. Echoing scholars from a wide-range of disciplines who recognize the uncertainty of the nature of the self, these essays question the notion of the autonomous self and the attendant idea of continuous identity unfolding in a unified personality. Instead, they suggest that the early modern self was variable and unstable, and can only be grasped by exploring selves situated in specific historical and social/cultural contexts and revealed through the wide range of historical documents considered here. The three sections of the volume consider: first, the theoretical contexts of understanding egodocuments in early modern Europe; then, the practical ways egodocuments from the period may be used for writing life-histories today; and finally, a wider range of historical documents that might be added to what are usually seen as egodocuments.
Rhetoric and Law in Early Modern Europe
Title | Rhetoric and Law in Early Modern Europe PDF eBook |
Author | Victoria Ann Kahn |
Publisher | |
Total Pages | 355 |
Release | 2001 |
Genre | Forensic oratory |
ISBN | 9780300088885 |
"The book provides a historical perspective on such issues as the role of contract law in the production of the modern subject, the intersection of rhetoric and law in the construction of gender and sexuality, and the contribution of theories of equity to early modern notions of intention and political agency. The essays also shed light on the influence of legal decisions on early modern values in public and private life, on notions of literary fiction, and on ideas about the social contract."--Jacket.
Genre and Women's Life Writing in Early Modern England
Title | Genre and Women's Life Writing in Early Modern England PDF eBook |
Author | Michelle M. Dowd |
Publisher | Routledge |
Total Pages | 252 |
Release | 2016-04-15 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 1317129369 |
By taking account of the ways in which early modern women made use of formal and generic structures to constitute themselves in writing, the essays collected here interrogate the discursive contours of gendered identity in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. The contributors explore how generic choice, mixture, and revision influence narrative constructions of the female self in early modern England. Collectively they situate women's life writings within the broader textual culture of early modern England while maintaining a focus on the particular rhetorical devices and narrative structures that comprise individual texts. Reconsidering women's life writing in light of recent critical trends-most notably historical formalism-this volume produces both new readings of early modern texts (such as Margaret Cavendish's autobiography and the diary of Anne Clifford) and a new understanding of the complex relationships between literary forms and early modern women's 'selves'. This volume engages with new critical methods to make innovative connections between canonical and non-canonical writing; in so doing, it helps to shape the future of scholarship on early modern women.
The Oxford History of Life Writing: Volume 2. Early Modern
Title | The Oxford History of Life Writing: Volume 2. Early Modern PDF eBook |
Author | Alan Stewart |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | 480 |
Release | 2018-05-04 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 0191506990 |
The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume2. Early Modern explores life-writing in England between 1500 and 1700, and argues that this was a period which saw remarkable innovations in biography, autobiography, and diary-keeping that laid the foundations for our modern life-writing. The challenges wrought by the upheavals and the sixteenth-century English Reformation and seventeenth-century Civil Wars moulded British and early American life-writing in unique and lasting ways. While classical and medieval models continued to exercise considerable influence, new forms began to challenge them. The English Reformation banished the saints' lives that dominated the writings of medieval Catholicism, only to replace them with new lives of Protestant martyrs. Novel forms of self-accounting came into existence: from the daily moral self-accounting dictated by strands of Calvinism, to the daily financial self-accounting modelled on the new double-entry book-keeping. This volume shows how the most ostensibly private journals were circulated to build godly communities; how women found new modes of recording and understanding their disrupted lives; how men started to compartmentalize their lives for public and private consumption. The volume doesn't intend to present a strict chronological progression from the medieval to the modern, nor to suggest the triumphant rise of the fact-based historical biography. Instead, it portrays early modern England as a site of multiple, sometimes conflicting possibilities for life-writing, all of which have something to teach us about how the period understood both the concept of a 'life' and what it mean to 'write' a life.
Rhetoric and Law in Early Modern Europe
Title | Rhetoric and Law in Early Modern Europe PDF eBook |
Author | Victoria Ann Kahn |
Publisher | |
Total Pages | 355 |
Release | 2001 |
Genre | Forensic oratory |
ISBN | 9780300145557 |
"The book provides a historical perspective on such issues as the role of contract law in the production of the modern subject, the intersection of rhetoric and law in the construction of gender and sexuality, and the contribution of theories of equity to early modern notions of intention and political agency. The essays also shed light on the influence of legal decisions on early modern values in public and private life, on notions of literary fiction, and on ideas about the social contract."--Jacket.
Life Writing in Reformation Europe
Title | Life Writing in Reformation Europe PDF eBook |
Author | Irena Backus |
Publisher | Routledge |
Total Pages | 310 |
Release | 2016-05-06 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1317105184 |
The Reformation period witnessed an explosion in the number of biographies of contemporary religious figures being published. Whether lives of reformers worthy of emulation, or heretics deserving condemnation, the genre of biography became a key element in the confessional rivalries that raged across Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Offering more than a general survey of Life writing, this volume examines key issues and questions about how this trend developed among different confessions and how it helped shape lasting images of reformers, particularly Luther and Calvin up to the modern period. This is the first-ever full length study of the subject showing that Lives of the reformers constitute an integral part of the intellectual and cultural history of the period, serving as an important source of information about the different Reformations. Depending on their origin, they provide a lesson in theology but also in civic values and ideals of education of the period. Genevan Lives in particular also point up the delicate issue of 'Reformed hagiography' which their authors try to avoid with a varying degree of success. Having consistently been at the forefront of the study of the intellectual history of the Reformation Irena Backus is perfectly placed to highlight the importance of Life writing. This is a path-breaking study that will open up a new way of viewing the confessional conflicts of the period and their historiography.