2022/11/15 by Volker Depkat, Depkat, Volker
Arts and Humanities · #Autobiographical and Biographical Writing
paper · doi:10.47060/jaaas.v1i1.79
openalex publication_date 2022/11/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/23
In lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of this forum contribution:
 The burgeoning field of life-writing studies constitutes a meeting ground of historiography and literary criticism. Historians and literary critics approach one and the same phenomenon from different disciplinary perspectives and with different epistemological interests. For historians, the texts that literary critics call life writing are personal documents, Selbstzeugnisse, or ego-documents that help pave the way toward understanding the “subjective dimension” of history, i.e., the personality, minds, motivations, emotions, and worldviews of concrete historical actors, who made, experienced, or endured history.[1]