Spiritual Autobiography: Monthly Review

Definition
The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in
the English periodical The Monthly Review, when he suggested the word as a hybrid, but condemned it as
"pedantic". However, its next recorded use was in its present sense, by Robert Southey in 1809.[2] Despite only
being named early in the nineteenth century, first-person autobiographical writing originates in antiquity. Roy
Pascal differentiates autobiography from the periodic self-reflective mode of journal or diary writing by noting
that "[autobiography] is a review of a life from a particular moment in time, while the diary, however reflective it
may be, moves through a series of moments in time".[3] Autobiography thus takes stock of the autobiographer's
life from the moment of composition. While biographers generally rely on a wide variety of documents and
viewpoints, autobiography may be based entirely on the writer's memory. The memoir form is closely
associated with autobiography but it tends, as Pascal claims, to focus less on the self and more on others
during the autobiographer's review of their own life.[3]
Autobiographical works are by nature subjective. The inability—or unwillingness—of the author to accurately
recall memories has in certain cases resulted in misleading or incorrect information. Some sociologists and
psychologists have noted that autobiography offers the author the ability to recreate history.
Related forms
Spiritual autobiography
Spiritual autobiography is an account of an author's struggle or journey towards God, followed by conversion a
religious conversion, often interrupted by moments of regression. The author re-frames their life as a
demonstration of divine intention through encounters with the Divine. The earliest example of a spiritual
autobiography is Augustine's Confessions though the tradition has expanded to include other religious
traditions in works such as Mohandas Gandhi's An Autobiography and Black Elk's Black Elk
Speaks. Deliverance from Error by Al-Ghazali is another example. The spiritual autobiography often serves as
an endorsement of the writer's religion.
Memoirs
Main article: Memoir
A memoir is slightly different in character from an autobiography. While an autobiography typically focuses on
the "life and times" of the writer, a memoir has a narrower, more intimate focus on the author's memories,
feelings and emotions. Memoirs have often been written by politicians or military leaders as a way to record
and publish an account of their public exploits. One early example is that of Julius Caesar's Commentarii de
Bello Gallico, also known as Commentaries on the Gallic Wars. In the work, Caesar describes the battles that
took place during the nine years that he spent fighting local armies in the Gallic Wars. His second
memoir, Commentarii de Bello Civili (or Commentaries on the Civil War) is an account of the events that took
place between 49 and 48 BC in the civil war against Gnaeus Pompeius and the Senate.
Leonor López de Córdoba (1362–1420) wrote what is supposed to be the first autobiography in Spanish.
The English Civil War (1642–1651) provoked a number of examples of this genre, including works by
Sir Edmund Ludlow and Sir John Reresby. French examples from the same period include the memoirs
of Cardinal de Retz (1614–1679) and the Duc de Saint-Simon.
Fictional autobiography
The term "fictional autobiography" signifies novels about a fictional character written as though the character
were writing their own autobiography, meaning that the character is the first-person narrator and that the novel
addresses both internal and external experiences of the character. Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders is an early
example. Charles Dickens' David Copperfield is another such classic, and J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the
Rye is a well-known modern example of fictional autobiography. Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is yet another
example of fictional autobiography, as noted on the front page of the original version. The term may also apply
to works of fiction purporting to be autobiographies of real characters, e.g., Robert Nye's Memoirs of Lord
Byron.
History
The classical period: Apologia, oration, confession
In antiquity such works were typically entitled apologia, purporting to be self-justification rather than self-
documentation. The title of John Henry Newman's 1864 Christian confessional work Apologia Pro Vita
Sua refers to this tradition.
The historian Flavius Josephus introduces his autobiography Josephi Vita (c. 99) with self-praise, which is
followed by a justification of his actions as a Jewish rebel commander of Galilee.[4]
The rhetor Libanius (c. 314–394) framed his life memoir Oration I (begun in 374) as one of his orations, not of a
public kind, but of a literary kind that would not be read aloud in privacy.
Augustine of Hippo (354–430) applied the title Confessions to his autobiographical work, and Jean-Jacques
Rousseau used the same title in the 18th century, initiating the chain of confessional and sometimes racy and
highly self-critical autobiographies of the Romantic era and beyond. Augustine's was arguably the first Western
autobiography ever written, and became an influential model for Christian writers throughout the Middle Ages. It
tells of the hedonistic lifestyle Augustine lived for a time within his youth, associating with young men who
boasted of their sexual exploits; his following and leaving of the anti-sex and anti-marriage Manichaeism in
attempts to seek sexual morality; and his subsequent return to Christianity due to his embracement
of Skepticism and the New Academy movement (developing the view that sex is good, and that virginity is
better, comparing the former to silver and the latter to gold; Augustine's views subsequently strongly influenced
Western theology[5]). Confessions is considered one of the great masterpieces of western literature.[6]
Peter Abelard's 12th-century Historia Calamitatum is in the spirit of Augustine's Confessions, an outstanding
autobiographical document of its period.
Early autobiographies
A scene from the Baburnama
In the 15th century, Leonor López de Córdoba, a Spanish noblewoman, wrote her Memorias, which may be the
first autobiography in Castillian.
Zāhir ud-Dīn Mohammad Bābur, who founded the Mughal dynasty of South Asia kept a
journal Bāburnāma (Chagatai/Persian: ‫ ;بابر نامہ‬literally: "Book of Babur" or "Letters of Babur") which was written
between 1493 and 1529.
One of the first great autobiographies of the Renaissance is that of the sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto
Cellini (1500–1571), written between 1556 and 1558,

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