Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Autobiography and History
- 2 Beginnings: Histories and Families
- 3 Beginnings and Myth
- 4 Parents, Crisis and Education
- 5 The Hidden Past and Personal History
- 6 Autobiographies of Displacement
- 7 The Individual and Place
- 8 Fiction and Autobiography
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
8 - Fiction and Autobiography
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Autobiography and History
- 2 Beginnings: Histories and Families
- 3 Beginnings and Myth
- 4 Parents, Crisis and Education
- 5 The Hidden Past and Personal History
- 6 Autobiographies of Displacement
- 7 The Individual and Place
- 8 Fiction and Autobiography
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
It is part of our experience of the past that we change it as it passes through our hands; and in changing it we may make it more puzzling in making it more our own.
Of these chapters, this is the most tentative; it seeks to discuss in practice what many critics—including this one—try to account for in theory: the puzzling relationship between autobiography and fiction. Though tentative, it is undertaken with a conviction: to say that autobiography is merely a form of fiction is not sufficient. Why this is so may become apparent in the course of this discussion, but as a starting point we may wonder why, if there is no real distinction between autobiography and fiction, the two categories maintain themselves. Perhaps there is no essential or metaphysical distinction between the two modes. Nevertheless, this avoids the effective aspect of writing.
Certainly, the theory of recent years all too obviously demonstrates the untenability of naive views of autobiography as an unproblematic account of the past (or the past self) ‘as it was’. It would be equally foolish to construct absolute distinctions between the literatures of fact and of fiction based on style. History and personal history both use ‘fictional’ techniques. Nevertheless, that is not to say there is no difference.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Artful HistoriesModern Australian Autobiography, pp. 164 - 190Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996