Threads of Life: Autobiography and the WillMany autobiographers share profound questions about human life with their readers—questions like: To what extent was my life imposed on me? To what extent did I bring it about through particular choices and actions, through the activity of my own will? Indeed, the issue of the will is central to autobiographical writing, and some of the greatest autobiographies give extended consideration to the will—its nature; its powers; its limitations; the forms of freedom, constraint, and expression it finds in various cultures; its role in particular human lives. In this new study, unprecedented in subject and scope, Richard Freadman offers the first sustained account of how changing theological, philosophical, and psychological accounts of the human will have been reflected in the writing of autobiography, and of how autobiography in its turn has helped shape various understandings of the will. Early chapters trace narrative representations of the will from antiquity (the Greeks and Augustine) to postmodernism (Derrida and Barthes), with particular emphasis on late modernity's culture of the will. Later chapters then present detailed and powerfully original readings of autobiographical texts by Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, B. F. Skinner, Ernest Hemingway, Simone de Beauvoir, Arthur Koestler, Stephen Spender, and Diana Trilling. Freadman's interdisciplinary approach to autobiography and the will includes a theoretical defense of the view that autobiographers are, in varying degrees, agents in their own texts. Threads of Life argues that late modernity has inherited deeply conflicted attitudes to the will. Freadman suggests that these attitudes, now deeply embedded in contemporary cultural discourse, need reexamining. In this, he contends, 'reflective autobiography' has an important part to play. |
From inside the book
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Page 2
... relationship between the will and morality is one of the central themes of this book . This is thorny territory because it's all too easy to point the finger and say that someone is " doing the wrong thing " and could be doing " the ...
... relationship between the will and morality is one of the central themes of this book . This is thorny territory because it's all too easy to point the finger and say that someone is " doing the wrong thing " and could be doing " the ...
Page 3
... relation to " moral luck " and contin- gency . I've also been talking in a way that suggests that the notion of free will ( we'll see later in the book that it's possible to believe in the existence of the will without believing in its ...
... relation to " moral luck " and contin- gency . I've also been talking in a way that suggests that the notion of free will ( we'll see later in the book that it's possible to believe in the existence of the will without believing in its ...
Page 7
... relation to other psychic fac- ulties . In this book I argue that the will is real , that it is susceptible of a fair degree of conceptual clarification , but that conceptual clarification alone will not en- able us to explore the will ...
... relation to other psychic fac- ulties . In this book I argue that the will is real , that it is susceptible of a fair degree of conceptual clarification , but that conceptual clarification alone will not en- able us to explore the will ...
Page 8
... relation to the notion of the subject ) ; it also introduces and de- fines the key analytic and descriptive terms that are used throughout the book . Here I give my definition of the will — a definition that sees it as an intrinsic ...
... relation to the notion of the subject ) ; it also introduces and de- fines the key analytic and descriptive terms that are used throughout the book . Here I give my definition of the will — a definition that sees it as an intrinsic ...
Page 9
... relation to contingency , principally in her four major volumes of autobiography . Here I trace her shifting conceptions of will : their status as a response to her hor- ror of contingency and their ethical implications . The most ...
... relation to contingency , principally in her four major volumes of autobiography . Here I trace her shifting conceptions of will : their status as a response to her hor- ror of contingency and their ethical implications . The most ...
Contents
Threads Autobiography Theory | 11 |
Late Modernity and the Will | 51 |
Theory and Practice Willless Autobiography? Althusser Skinner and Barthes | 84 |
Moral Luck in Paris Luck and Ethical Will in Hemingways A Moveable Feast | 117 |
Being and Making Oneself Be Will and Contingency in Simone de Beauvoirs Autobiography | 140 |
Factor x Arthur Koestler and the Ghost in the Machine | 175 |
Strange Identity Stephen Spender and Weakness of Will | 205 |
Custodians of Their Own Fates? Diana and Lionel Trilling in The Beginning of the Journey | 244 |
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Common terms and phrases
action agent Althusser Althusser's argues Aristotle Arthur Koestler Augustine autobi autobiography B. F. Skinner behavior Cambridge causal cause chapter choice complex conception condition consciousness constitutive constraints contingency cultural D. H. Lawrence determined Diana Trilling dimension essay ethical existence existential experience fact faculty feeling freedom Freud Freudian Hemingway Hemingway's human Ibid ideology implications individual inner instance intellectual introspection Kant kind least Lionel Trilling literary lives London luck Maimonides Marx means metaphor mind mode moral moral luck motives Moveable Feast narrative nature Nietzsche notion one's Oxford particular passage Paul Ricoeur person philosophical political postmodern psychological rational reflective relation relationship reprint Ricoeur Roland Barthes Sartre Sartre's seems sense Simone de Beauvoir Skinner social Stephen Spender structure suggest theory things threads tion trans transcendence Trilling's unconscious understanding University Press volition weakness will's World Within World writing York