Altered Egos: Authority in American Autobiography
Color: Purple
Categories: Books, Literature & Fiction, History & Criticism



Dimensions: 5.81 x 1.04 x 8.56 inches
Language: English
ISBN-10: 019505833X
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Print length: 304 pages
Publication date: November 9, 1989
ISBN-13: 978-0195058338
Edition: 1st
subtitle: 1st Edition
author: Visit Amazon's G. Thomas Couser Page search results G. Thomas Couser
review: Editorial Reviews Review "Thoughtful, probing, alert, intelligent....No student of American autobiography, or of autobiography from wherever, can afford to be unaware of its argument at large or of its readings in detail of specific texts."-- American Literary History "Another landmark study of autobiography by Couser....Highly recommended for undergraduate and graduate students, and faculty."-- Choice "A thoroughly rewarding book, both for the variety and richness of texts it discusses and for the glimpse it affords into the world of post-poststructuralist autobiography studies."-- Journal of English and Germanic Philology "Vital, original perspectives on the study of autobiography."-- American Literature "A substantial contribution to autobiography studies and in many respects strikingly original. Couser brings a wide range of both historical and critical scholarship to bear upon the autobiographies he studies, but never subordinates his own purposes to the orthodoxies of a particular critical method." --Marilyn R. Chandler, Mills College From the Back Cover In this work, Couser explores the authority of American autobiography in several related senses. First, the idea that autobiography is authoritative writing because it is presumably verifiable. Second, the idea that one's life is one's exclusive textual domain. Third, the idea that, because of the apparent congruence between the implicit ideology of the genre and that of the nation, autobiography has a special prestige in America. About the Author G. Thomas Couser is at Hofstra University. Read more