The Origins of the Individualist Self (ePub)

This book traces the emergence of the concept of self-identity in
modern Western culture, as it was both reflected in and advanced by
the development of autobiographical practice in early modern
England. It offers a fresh and illuminating appraisal of the nature
of autobiographical narrative in general and of the early modern
forms of biography, diary and autobiography in particular. The
result is a significant and original contribution to the history of
individualism.

Michael Mascuch argues that the definitive characteristic of
individualist self-identity is the personal capacity to produce a
unified retrospective autobiographical narrative, and he stresses
that this capacity was first demonstrated in England during the
last decade of the eighteenth century. He examines the long-term
process of innovation in written discourse leading up to this
event, from the first use of blank almanacs and common place books
by the pious in the late sixteenth century, through the popular
criminal biographies of the late seventeenth century, to the
printed-for-the-author scandalous memoirs of the mid-eighteenth
century.

While offering a detailed account of a significant period in the
rise of a modern literary genre, Origins of the Individualist
Self also addresses topics which are central in the fields of
literary and cultural theory and social and cultural history.