Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Character and Conversion in Autobiography: Augustine, Montaigne, Descartes, Rousseau, and Sartre

Character and Conversion in Autobiography: Augustine, Montaigne, Descartes, Rousseau, and Sartre

Riley, Patrick

Hardcover

PhilosophyBiographies General

ISBN10: 0813922925
ISBN13: 9780813922928
Publisher: Univ Of Virginia Pr
Published: Nov 4 2004
Pages: 256
Weight: 1.10
Height: 0.97 Width: 14.74 Depth: 9.28
Language: English

What happens, asks Patrick Riley, when a life transformed becomes an autobiography? What is the relationship between the subjective upheaval of conversion and the representation of character? Who, then, is this self writing the narrative of a life? Thinking of conversion as a radical turning point or fulcrum on which incompatible configurations of character are precariously balanced, Riley examines both historically and tropologically the paradoxes of identity and life writing that conversion raises. While conversion can motivate the writing of an autobiography that ties together threads of a life story, it also implies a fragmentation of character. As it creates a unified framework for the subject's history, it also disrupts any stable conception of the self.

Beginning with Augustine's Confessions as the canonical model of religious conversion, the author investigates the changing forms of conversion in selected works by Montaigne and Descartes, culminating in reformulations by Rousseau and Sartre. Moving from a purely religious rebirth to works grounded in a personal philosophy or aesthetic vocation, the autobiographies considered in this book stand as episodes in a genealogy of conversion.

Riley argues that the metamorphoses of character inherent to conversion disrupt any interpretation or even representation of the self as static. It is no longer clear that the narrator represents the subject in any but a nominal way. In fact, Riley contends, the subject of an autobiography can never be self-identical.

Challenging predominant theories of subjectivity in autobiography, Character and Conversion in Autobiography recognizes subjectivity as a dynamic process and suggests a redefinition of how we examine character and life writing.

Also in

Philosophy

View All