When Memory Speaks
by Jill Ker Conway
184 Members (3.92)
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Description
J ill Ker Conway, one of our most admired autobiographers--author of The Road from Coorain and True North--looks astutely and with feeling into the modern memoir: the forms and styles it assumes, and the strikingly different ways in which men and women respectively tend to understand and present their lives. In a narrative rich with evocations of memoirists over the centuries--from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and George Sand to W. E. B. Du Bois, Virginia Woolf, Frank McCourt and Katharine show more Graham--the author suggests why it is that we are so drawn to the reading of autobiography, and she illuminates the cultural assumptions behind the ways in which we talk about ourselves. Conway traces the narrative patterns typically found in autobiographies by men to the tale of the classical Greek hero and his epic journey of adventure. She shows how this configuration evolved, in memoirs, into the passionate romantic struggling against the conventions of society, into the frontier hero battling the wilderness, into self-made men overcoming economic obstacles to create an invention or a fortune--or, more recently, into a quest for meaning, for an understandable past, for an ethnic identity. In contrast, she sees the designs that women commonly employ for their memoirs as evolving from the writings of the mystics--such as Dame Julian of Norwich or St. Teresa of Avila--about their relationship with an all-powerful God. As against the male autobiographer's expectation of power over his fate, we see the woman memoirist again and again believing that she lacks command of her destiny, and tending to censor her own story. Throughout, Conway underlines the memoir's magic quality of allowing us to enter another human being's life and mind--and how this experience enlarges and instructs our own lives. show lessTags
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Author Information
14+ Works 3,603 Members
Jill Ker Conway was born Jill Kathryn Ker in Hillston, New South Wales, Australia on October 9, 1934. She received a history degree from the University of Sydney in 1958 and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1969. She took a teaching post at the University of Toronto. She became a dean in 1971 and a vice president in 1973. In 1975, she became the show more first woman to be named president of Smith College. She left Smith in 1985 to become a writer. She wrote three memoirs entitled The Road from Coorain, True North, and A Woman's Education. In 2002, the PBS program Masterpiece Theater used The Road from Coorain as the basis for a film. She also wrote When Memory Speaks: Reflections on Autobiography. She edited several books including Written by Herself: Autobiographies of American Women and In Her Own Words: Women's Memoirs from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. In 2013, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal. She died on June 1, 2018 at the age of 83. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Common Knowledge
- Dedication
- In memory of John
- First words
- Why is autobiography the most popular form of fiction for modern readers?
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Those forms also tell me that his departure from life at such an early age was most likely involuntary--a piece of knowledge which changes the emotional and moral climate of my childhood, a personal evidence of how much history matters.
Classifications
- Genres
- Biography & Memoir, Literature Studies and Criticism, Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 808.06692 — Literature & rhetoric Literature, rhetoric & criticism Rhetoric and collections of literary texts from more than two literatures Rhetoric and anthologies By Type Of Writing Writing non-fiction (by topic) Writing about history/writing biographies
- LCC
- CT25 .C68 — Auxiliary Sciences of History Biography Biography
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 184
- Popularity
- 177,818
- Rating
- (3.92)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 4
- ASINs
- 1
