Autobiographical writing has been an inherent part of Western culture and literary traditions for more than 2000 years. Especially during the last years, a considerable amount of research has been conducted on the genre. This volume, however, focuses on three fields which have not yet been at the centre of literary studies: firstly, the classical tradition, secondly, autobiographies of the 18th and early 19th century, which were mostly written in Latin and refer back to their classical predecessors, and thirdly, those modern and postmodern (meta-) autobiographies which reflect on the genre and play with conceptions of historiography, fact and fiction. This collection of essays offers 21 readings of fairly unknown autobiographies and provides new perspectives on the genre and its functions.weiterlesen