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AUTOBIOGRAPHY,
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL: "A
narrative account typically written by
an individual that purports to depict his or
her life and character. Unlike diaries and
journals, which are kept for the author's
private use, autobiographies are written
expressly for a public audience" ( Murfin
and Ray 32). While both autobiographies and
memoirs are "produced for public
consumption" and depict "people and events
the author has known and experienced,"
autobiographies are also expected to offer the author/narrator's
"detailed reflection and introspection" (Murfin
and Ray 32). Two examples of
autobiographical works are Equiano's
Narrative and Rousseau's Confessions.
See also
NARRATIVE, NARRATOR, and SLAVE NARRATIVE. |
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GENRE: "From the French
genre for 'kind' or 'type,' the
classification of literary works on the
basis of their content, form, or technique"
(Murfin and Ray 189). "A type of
literary work, such as short story, novel,
essay, play, or poem. The term may also be
used to classify literature within a type,
such as science-fiction stories or detective
novels" (Charters 1048). A genre is usually
recognized and accepted by readers because
it conforms to certain conventions
(defining characteristics, traditional or
commonly used writing techniques, literary
rules or codes) expected of that certain
type of literary work.
Types of NARRATIVE genres include the
GOTHIC ROMANCE and the SLAVE
NARRATIVE. |
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GOTHIC: This term
"originally referred to the Goths, a
Germanic tribe, then came to signify 'germanic,'
then "medieval" (Abrams 78).
See also
GOTHIC ROMANCE. |
GOTHIC ROMANCE: Horace Walpole's
Castle of Otranto (1765) is often
credited as inaugurating this popular genre.
Gothic Romance stories, often set in the
Middle Ages [i.e. Medieval times], typically
feature "a gloomy castle furnished with
dungeons, subterraneous passages, and
sliding panels, focused on the suffering
imposed on an innocent heroine by a cruel
and lustful villain, and made bountiful use
of ghosts, mysterious disappearances, and
other sensational and supernatural
occurrences . . . . The principal aim of of
such novels was to evoke chilling terror by
exploiting mystery and a variety of
horrors. Many of them are now enjoyed
mainly as period pieces, but the best opened
up to fiction the realm of the irrational
and of the perverse impulses and the
nightmarish terrors that lie underneath the
orderly surface of the civilized mind"
(Abrams 78). Popular Romantic era
Gothic novels included as Ann Radcliffe's
The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), Matthew
Gregory Lewis' The Monk (1796) and
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's
Frankenstein (1818); and often
dramatized shocking erotic and sadistic
subject matter, such as "rape, incest,
murder, and diabolism" (Abrams 78).
See also
GOTHIC and ROMANCE and NARRATIVE. |
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NARRATIVE:
"A story
or a telling of a story, or an account of a
situation or event [or a sequence of
events]. Narratives may be fictional or
true; they may be written in either prose or
verse" (Murfin and Ray 287). "A
sequence of events, often (but not always)
unified and connected in storytelling"
(Charters 1050). |
NARRATOR:
"The
teller of a story," who may be a
character
who participates in the story's
action" (Charters 1050).
First-Person Narration: "The telling
of a story by a person who was involved
directly in or directly observed the
action narrated. Such a narrator refers
to himself or herself as I
and becomes a character in the
story, with his or her understanding
shaping the reader's perception of the
events and characters" (Charters 1047).
E.g. Equiano is the
first-person narrator of his own
story in his autobiographical slave
narrative The Interesting
Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano,
or Gustavas Vassa, the African.
See also
AUTOBIOGRAPHY, NARRATIVE, and SLAVE
NARRATIVE. |
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PRIMITIVISM: 18th-century
"Primitivism," according to M. H.
Abrams, can be characterized as "the
preference for what is conceived to be
'nature' and 'the natural' over 'art' and
'the artificial' in any area of human
culture and values" (170). Primitivists
espoused "natural"
or innate "instincts and passion," "outdoor
'nature,' unmodified by human intervention,"
and "spontaneity, the free expression of
emotion, and the intuitive products of
'natural genius'" (Abrams 170).
Expressions of 18th-century Primitivism
included nostalgia for a lost "golden age,"
the cult of the "Noble Savage," and the
"vogue of 'natural' poetry written by
supposedly uneducated peasants or working
folk" (Abrams 170). |
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ROMANCE:
In many European
languages the term for the novel is
roman, "derived from
the medieval term, the romance"
(Abrams 130). The prose Romance, like its
precursor the chivalric romance
of the Middle Ages, presents colorful,
sensationalized, and fantastic adventure
stories, featuring the exploits and
(usually) triumphs of idealized,
larger-than-life heroes, contending against
dastardly villains and seemingly
insurmountable obstacles.
See
also
GOTHIC ROMANCE and NARRATIVE |
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SENSIBILITY:
Literature
of "Sensibility," influenced by
18th-century moral and aesthetic
philosophies of innate human benevolence,
featured highly sensitive and often
emotionally tortured protagonists
subject to acute feelings of sympathy for
other people's distresses and joys, and
intense emotional responsiveness to beauty
and sublimity (Abrams 190). |
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SLAVE NARRATIVE:
"A type of
narrative written by a former African .
. . slave that typically recounts that
individual's life and how he or she managed
to escape from" slavery (Murfin and Ray
449).
"From 1760-1947, more than 200 book-length
slave narratives were published in the
United States and England, and according to
Marion Starling (The Slave Narrative: Its
Place in American History, 1982) more
than 6,000 are known to exist"
(Campbell). Olaudah
Equiano was one of
the first Africans to write "unflinchingly
about their brutal life experiences. In
petitions, poems, fictions, and
autobiographies, also known as slave
narratives, they recreated their
environment and their mature selves as human
beings enduring grievous lives, in Britain,
the Americas and the Caribbean. They wrote
in conscious opposition to proslavery
stereotypes" (Ferguson 238).
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa
the African, first published in 1789,
was influential in supporting European and
U.S. abolitionist movements. Slavery in
British colonies was abolished in 1834. In
the United States, the slave narrative
"genre
was most prominent in the thirty years
leading up to the [U.S.] Civil War (1861 -
65)," near the end of which slavery in the
U.S. was abolished by the Thirteenth
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (Murfin
and Ray 449). "Although autobiographical,
slave narratives were chiefly intended to
convince the reader that slavery needed to
be abolished because of its devastating
impact on human lives and the human spirit.
Given this overriding social and moral
purpose, scholars have debated the extent to
which these narratives were strictly
autobiographical. Many have maintained that
numerous characters, events, and anecdotes,
though based in truth, were often
represented in a manner designed to achieve
the the most persuasive impact on the
reader. For instance, events could be
relayed out of their proper chronological
time, and some characters were composites or
even based on stereotypes" (Murfin and Ray
449). See
also
AUTOBIOGRAPHY and NARRATIVE |
Denis 
Olaudah
Thomas
Immanuel 