Life Writing - A Short Introduction

This volume is a comprehensive introduction to the field of life writing. What makes life writing so popular and important today is its interdisciplinarity and preoccupation with identity politics, crossing the disciplinary borders of literature, history, anthropology, sociology and psychology. The volume traces the history and evolution of the genre since antiquity and discusses its various forms such as autobiographies, biographies, diaries, interviews, digital narratives, popular ballads, as-told-to narratives and folk narratives transmitted through anecdotes or through institutional records, and non-literary forms such as biopics and documentaries.