Abstract
Autobiography has a double nature; it is both historical and literary. Particular autobiographies may embody aspects of this duality with varying degrees of purity or mixture, but, just as importantly, these two qualities are constituted by the approach taken by the interpreters of the texts. From a historical point of view an autobiography may be seen either as a source of data for biographical studies or as one biography among others — it is essentially a historical record, a source of information about the occurrence, sequence, and pattern of events. From a literary perspective an autobiography can be taken as a dramatic recounting of a particular period of time or as an imaginative presentation of a character from a unique perspective. Whereas questions about accuracy, comprehensiveness, and distortion might occupy the historian, matters of form, style, intention, and effect would interest the literary critic. This essay seeks to contribute to the study of religious autobiography, first, by relating these two perspectives to the psychological concepts of identity and generativity, and second, by examining a shift in the development of the Protestant ethic1 as it is reflected in the autobiographical writings of John Bunyan and Benjamin Franklin.
A briefer version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, in San Francisco, October 1973.
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Notes
M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, translated by Talcott Parsons, New York 1958.
W. Shumaker, English Autobiography: Its Emergence, Materials, and Form, Berkeley, Calif., 1954; B. J. Mandell, The Autobiographer’s Art, in: Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 27, no. 2, Winter 1968, pp. 215–226.
G. Gusdorf, Conditions et limites de l’autobiographie, in: Formen der Selbstdarstellung: Analekten zu einer Geschichte des literarischen Selbstportraits, ed. G. Reichenkron, Berlin, 1956; R. Pascal, Design and Truth in Autobiography, Cambridge, Mass., 1960.
F. Hart, Notes for an Anatomy of Modern Autobiography, in: New Literary History, vol. 1, 1969–70, pp. 485–5n; W. L. Howarth, Some Principles of Autobiography, in: New Literary History, vol. 5, 1973–74, pp. 363–83; P. Lejeune, Le pacte autobiographique, in: Poétique, no. 14, 1973, pp. 137–162; E. W. Bross, L’autobiographie considereé comme acte littéraire, in: Poétique, no. 17, 1974, pp. 14–26.
E. D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, New Haven, Conn., 1967.
S. Sacks, The Psychological Implications of Genre Distinctions, in: Genre, vol. 1, 1968, pp. 106–15.
D. Ebner, Autobiography in Seventeenth-Century England: Theology and the Self, The Hague, 1971. D. Shea, Spiritual Autobiography in Early America, Princeton, 1968. O. C. Watkins, The Puritan Experience: Studies in Spiritual Autobiography, New York, 1972.
E. W. Bruss, Autobiography: The Changing Structure of a Literary Act, Ph. D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1972.
N. Frye, The Anatomy of Criticism, Princeton, N. J., 1957.
Howarth, op. cit.
H. R. Jauss, Levels of Identification of Hero and Audience, in: New Literary History, vol. 5, 1973–74, pp. 283–318.
This distinction, and several points in this paragraph, are made in an excellent paper by J. Starobinski, The Style of Autobiography, in: S. Chatman, ed., Literary Style: A Symposium, New York, 1971.
Problemes de linguistique generale, Paris. 1966, p. 242; cited in Starobinski, op. cit.
For a full discussion of the autobiographical contract, and the relationship to fiction, biography, and other genres, cf. Lejeune, op cit.
Apologia Pro Vita Sua, New York, 1968, p. 184.
The theory of illocutionary acts was developed by J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, New York, 1965, and J. R. Searle, Speech Acts, Cambridge, 1969. The application of this theory to literature has begun to be made by R. Ohmann, Speech, Action, and Style, in: S. Chatman, ed., op. cit.; Speech Acts and the Definition of Literature, in: Philosophy and Rhetoric, vol. 4, 1971, pp. 1–19. The specific connection with autobiography has been made by Bruss, op. cit.
E. Erikson, Identity and the Life Cycle, New York, 1959, pp. 23, 102.
cf. eg., R. Bushman, Jonathan Edwards as Great Man: Identity, Conversion and Leadership in the Great Awakening, in: Soundings, vol. 52, 1969, pp. 15–46.
The Concept of Identity, The Hague, 1965.
Self-Realization and Social Definition: Two Aspects of Identity Formation, in: International Journal of Psycho-analysis, vol. 48, 1967, pp. 68–75.
D. Rapaport, Historical Introduction, in: E. Erikson, op. cit.
E. Jacobson, The Self and the Object World, New York, 1964.
E. Glover, Metapsychology or Metaphysics: A Psychoanalytic Essay, In: Psychoanalytic Quarterly, vol. 35, 1966, pp. 173–190.
N. Leites, The New Ego, New York, 1971.
H. Kohut, The Analysis of the Self, New York, 1971.
H. Kohut, Thoughts on Narcissism and Narcissistic Rage, in: The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, vol. 27, 1972, pp. 360–400.
E. S. Wolf, J. E. Gedo, and D. M. Terman, On the Adolescent Process as a Transformation of the Self, in: Journal of Youth and Adolescence, vol. 1, 1972, pp. 257–72.
J. Sandler and B. Rosenblatt, The Concept of the Representational World, in: The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, vol. 17, 1962, pp. 128–45.
For a discussion of ideal self, see J. Sandler, A. Holder, and D. Meers, The Ego Ideal and the Ideal Self, in: The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, vol. 18, 1963, pp. 139–58; see also R. Schafer, Ideals, the Ego Ideal, and the Ideal Self, in: R. R. Holt, ed. Motives and Thought, Psychological Issues Monograph, no. 18/19, New York, 1967. For a discussion of self-esteem as a function of harmony or discrepancy between the ideal and the actual self, see W. G. Joffe and J. Sandler, Some Conceptual Problems in the Consideration of Disorders of Narcissism, in: Journal of Child Psychotherapy, vol. 2,1967, pp. 56–66; also A. Reich, Pathologic Forms of Self-Esteem Regulation, in: The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, vol. 15, 1960, pp. 213–232.
Erikson, op. cit. p. 149.
Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth, New York, 1969.
Group Psychology and The Analysis of the Ego, 1921.
E. Kris, Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art, New York, 1952, especially pp. 29–32, 39.
ibid., p. 39.
M. Weber, op cit.
C. L. Sanford, An American Pilgrim’s Progress, in: American Quarterly, vol. 6, 1954, pp. 297–310; cf. also Shea, op. cit., p. 293, and R. Sayre, The Examined Self, Princeton, N. J., 1964, p. 34.
Weber, op. cit., p. 124.
Shea, op. cit., p. 241.
B. J. Mandel, Bunyan and the Autobiographer’s Art, in: Criticism, vol. 10, 1968, p. 236.
L. D. Lerner, Puritanism and the Spiritual Autobiography, in: Hibbert Journal, vol. 55, 1956–57, pp. 373–86.
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, New York, 1940, p. 24.
ibid., p. 114.
Kohut, 1972, op. cit., pp. 397–8.
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Ransohoff, P. (1976). A Psychological Approach to Religious Autobiography. In: Dux, G., Luckmann, T. (eds) Contributions to the Sociology of Knowledge / Contributions to the Sociology of Religion. Internationales Jahrbuch für Wissens- und Religionssoziologie / International Yearbook for Sociology of Knowledge and Religion, vol 10. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-663-14483-0_4
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