Autobiographical Writings

Book chapter


Hodgkin, K. 2017. Autobiographical Writings. in: Hiscock, Andrew and Wilcox, Helen (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern English Literature and Religion Oxford University Press.
AuthorsHodgkin, K.
EditorsHiscock, Andrew and Wilcox, Helen
Abstract

Emerging out of the traditions of exemplary lives and self-analysis at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the genre of spiritual autobiography writing is fluid and unstable both textually and generically. The individualism that has often been taken to define the autobiographical project is problematized in these accounts, which tend to foreground self-transcendence over self-assertion, collective over individual identities, and exemplarity over uniqueness. The spiritual framework provides a language of self-narrative and self-analysis, structured around affliction and redemption, and privileging inward over outward experiences. As a mode which insists on the truth of experience, it allows marginal selves (including women and lower-class men) a public voice, above all in the gathered churches of the revolutionary decades and after, while also containing those voices within tight conventions. The simultaneous restrictions and liberations of these various frames offer important perspectives on debates about the early modern self.

Book titleThe Oxford Handbook of Early Modern English Literature and Religion
Year2017
PublisherOxford University Press
Publication dates
Print29 Jun 2017
OnlineAug 2017
Publication process dates
Deposited23 Nov 2018
Series Oxford Handbooks
ISBN9780199672806
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199672806.013.12
Web address (URL)https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199672806.013.12
Additional information

This material was originally published in The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern English Literature and Religion edited by Andrew Hiscock and Helen Wilcox, and has been reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199672806.013.12. For permission to reuse this material, please visit http://global.oup.com/academic/rights.

LicenseAll rights reserved (under embargo)
Accepted author manuscript
Permalink -

https://repository.uel.ac.uk/item/84v45

Download files

  • 145
    total views
  • 470
    total downloads
  • 0
    views this month
  • 2
    downloads this month

Export as

Related outputs

Time and Space
Hodgkin, K. 2020. Time and Space. in: Tamm, M. and Arcangeli, A. (ed.) Volume 3: A Cultural History of Memory in the Early Modern Age Bloomsbury Publishing.
Abject Hypocrisy: Gender, Religion, and the Self
Hodgkin, K. 2017. Abject Hypocrisy: Gender, Religion, and the Self. in: Nigri, Lucia and Tsentourou, Naya (ed.) Forms of Hypocrisy in Early Modern England Routledge.
Researching memory in early modern studies
Chedgzoy, Kate, Graham, Elspeth, Hodgkin, K. and Wray, Ramona 2018. Researching memory in early modern studies. Memory Studies. 11 (1), pp. 5-20. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698017736834
Childhood and Loss in Early Modern Life Writing
Hodgkin, K. 2017. Childhood and Loss in Early Modern Life Writing. Parergon. 33 (2), pp. 115-134. https://doi.org/10.1353/pgn.2016.0078