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The Corner Stones of Romantic Autobiography: Sympathy, Simplicity, and Authenticity

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The Corner Stones of Romantic Autobiography: Sympathy, Simplicity, and Authenticity Kimberley Waterman rMA Thesis Dr. R. Glitz The Corner Stones of Romantic Autobiography: Sympathy, Simplicity, and Authenticity “And how know they, when from myself they hear of myself, whether I say true; seeing no man knows what is in man, but the spirit of man which is in him?” – St. Augustine To create an understanding of attitudes towards autobiography today it is essential to take a look at the notions that play an essential part in the creation of and critique on autobiography today and during the Romantic period. The goal is to gain an understanding of truth in the Romantic era. What were the arguments, what was being said about this newly emerging and increasingly popular genre? It is important to ask how Romantic critics understood the role of truthfulness in autobiography as well as enquire into their opinions on alteration and modification. The essential notions for successful autobiography include language, sympathy, and truthfulness and authenticity. The genre of autobiography as we know it today was emerging during the Romantic era. “It is during the Romantic period that autobiography emerges from the shadows, and effectively rises above the sub or marginally literary […] to establish itself as a literary genre”(3 Stelzig). A discussion of Romantic critical texts concerning the forms of self- writing at the time will reveal the importance placed on truthfulness as well as how these critics were starting to differentiate between biography, a genre they were familiar with, and autobiography, a new genre that appeared to be a form of biography. They were trying to understand this new form, unpack it, and also prescribe its practice. The discussion will reveal how and under which circumstances the Romantic critics believed autobiography was supposed to be written. Simple language use proved to be an essential element for a successful autobiography. The importance of this type of language use can be illuminated by a discussion of William Wordsworth’s The Preface in which he advocates for the use of everyday language in poetry writing to push out the popular but abstruse poetic diction that was frequently employed. In doing so, Wordsworth brought poetry and autobiography closer together. The general acceptance 1 of his theory took some time but now is seen as a pivotal to an understanding of the Romantic era. However, there is still a lack of consensus when it comes to defining autobiography, critcis like De Man question whether it is at all possible to do so. A comparison between the Romantic prescriptive texts and present day critical texts that attempt to define autobiography sheds light on this issue and can help create a better understanding of why the genre of autobiography has been so difficult to properly define and pin down. 1. Essential Truth In order to establish the role of truthfulness in the conception of autobiography as we know it today, it is most informative to look at critical definitions and critically prescriptive texts from that time. These texts do not directly state a concrete definition of the genre of autobiography. They are not actively defining the genre as critics presently are. Rather, they were prescribing a newly emerging practice. These influential Romantic critics describe what they believed an autobiography should look like, what it should entail, and equally important, what it should not entail. These descriptions of their understanding of what a self-writing text should be, reveals their attitude towards truthfulness, alteration, the proper topics to discuss and, importantly, the correct tone of language to describe it all in. What becomes apparent is that truthfulness was essential in order to create a proper autobiography that would be accepted by critics and readers. However, at the same time alteration was equally important. The two may seem mutually exclusive but in fact had to come together in self-writing in order to maintain the fine and frail line that existed between what one may share of himself and what had to be kept private. John Foster was a minister, essayist, and reviewer who wrote Essays in a Series of Letters to a Friend (1826) in which he dedicated one of the essays to ‘a man’s writing memoirs of himself’. These prescriptive essays present Foster’s opinions on how he believed one could best write autobiographical texts, the necessary elements that need to be contained in a proper autobiography, as well as the problems an autobiographer may face and how to overcome them. Foster describes how he had proposed to some of his friends that they should write down memoirs of their own lives. The goal in doing so would not be to merely list the facts and events of their lives but rather to record their states of mind in order to demonstrate the progress of their respective characters, 2 because “it is in this progress that we acknowledge the chief importance of life to consist”(2). From the start on Foster demonstrates a clear preference for internal personal development and is less concerned with external facts and events. However, that does not mean that the external facts have no place within Foster’s theory on autobiographical texts; in fact they have an essential role to play, a threefold one to be precise. The most important concept that Foster develops in his theory is that of the interior person versus the exterior person. He makes a clear terminological distinction between the progress of a person’s character, the most important aspect of self-writing, according to Foster, and a person’s life events; he calls these, respectively, the interior and the exterior life. The exterior events procure their value because of their influence on the interior person, without this connection, and if external facts and events were to be examined in isolation, their value could not be properly estimated. Therefore, Foster emphasizes that any retrospective self-examination, which arguably is an essential aspect of autobiography, ought to start with an examination of the interior and may move outward from there. When an adequate analyses of the inner man has been made, the autobiographer “may proceed outward, to the course of his actions; of which he will thus have become qualified to form a much juster estimate, than he could by any exercise of judgment upon them regarded merely as exterior facts”(52). As Foster understands it, the progress of a person’s character is what an autobiography ought to contain in order to be considered valuable. External facts and events serve a purpose in the process of self- examination and autobiographical writing, however, “it is that interior character, whether displayed in actions or not, which forms the leading object of inquiry”(52). The interior character of a person is the most important object of analysis, and the exterior life serves a supporting role in this analysis. It is left to the writer to decide whether or not that interiority is ‘displayed in actions’ within his text. Introspection is thus the chief goal of writing an autobiography. The chronology of a life may be valuably relayed and can perform useful functions, however, an autobiography would not be an autobiography without a description of the progress and evaluation of the interior person. Even though their role is a secondary one, the external facts and events are of importance and value to both the process of writing autobiography and the resulting autobiographical text in several ways. “Through such a retrospective examination, the 3 exterior life will hold but the second place in attention, as being the imperfect offspring of that internal state which it is the primary and more difficult object to review”(52). Even though the facts and events come second they are still valuable to the autobiographical process. This becomes evident when Foster explains what a description of the development of a person’s character should look like and entail. What I am recommending is to follow the order of time, and reduce your recollections, from the earliest period to the present, into as simple a statement and explanation as you can, of your feelings, opinions and habits, and of the principal circumstances through each stage that have influenced them, till they have become at last what they now are (14-15). Foster advises any aspiring autobiographer to create a chronological overview of his or her life from the earliest moment of recollection to the present, with a focus on ‘feelings, opinions, and habits’. Because, according to Foster, the first way in which the external facts and events can be valuable is because of the impact they can have on ‘feelings, opinions, and habits’, in other words; the influence they can have on the interior life. This is the first way in which external facts and events manifest themselves as influential. The second purpose they serve is to aid the examination of a past life as well as provide the resulting narrative of that introspection with the chronological aspect of autobiography. “The chief circumstances of his practical life will, however, require to be noted, both for the purpose of so much illustration as they will afford of the state of his mind, and because they mark the points, and distinguish the stages of his progress”(52- 53). Thirdly, then, the circumstances of a life can provide an illustration of a person’s state of mind. The importance of truthfulness for Foster’s conception of autobiography becomes especially apparent in his discussion of memory. Memory is of essential importance in order to write a truthful autobiography. Without it, introspection is of little use or even impossible. Thus, when memory fails it makes it difficult for the interior and the exterior to come together in a description of one’s life.
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