Egodocuments and history : autobiographical writing in its social context since the Middle Ages

Abstract

textabstractDutch historian Jacques Presser used the term “egodocuments” to describe a\nrange of autobiographical materials, including diaries, memoirs, and wills—\nthe stuff we have been calling “life writing”—to signal its distance from earlier\nnotions of what constituted autobiography. “Egodocument” sounded\nawkward to me, its echo of psychological “ego” presence distracting. More\nforcefully than Rudolf Dekker’s rather conservative though scholarly introduction,\nhowever, this collection of essays demonstrates the flexibility of the\nterm. The material the scholars represented here discuss is less diverse than\nthe range of photographs, paintings, film, and written texts many academics\nare examining in their exploration of subjectivity, identity, community, and\nhistory. “Egodocuments,” however, make a strong showing.\nDekker’s explicit aim is to make Presser’s term more accepted, arguing\nthat in addition to wide acceptance in the Netherlands, it is being adopted in\nGermany and France. His definition of the term follows Philippe Lejeune’s\n“pacte autobiographique,” but concedes that the decision to call a text an\negodocument “may vary from reader to reader.” Dekker’s wish to expand the\ncategory of writings and texts that can be considered autobiographical may\nseem unadventurous to North American and English life-writing theorists.\nHowever, his brief account of the Dutch and German devolution of autobiographical\nstudies is informative and engaging.\nThe individual essays comprise the strength of this collection: nine pieces,\nranging from a study of “Jewish Ethical Wills as Egodocuments” examining\ndocuments from the late twelfth century, to “Online Diaries and Websites\non Egodocuments,” which offers an annotated list of relevant sites of both\npersonal journals and scholarly sources. Usually, in a gathering of essays, it’s\ncommon to find uneven quality. Here, each essay is forcefully argued. Each\nis firmly embedded in its historical context, and balances its analysis of particular\ndocuments with its scholarly context and social surroundings in place.\nThe first essay, “Food for Thought: Hieronymous Wolf Grapples with the\nScholarly Habitus,” by Gadi Algazi, in a personable, witty tone analyzes the\nethical freight Wolf attaches to his carefully noted habits of eating and drinking.\nEarly modern scholars will find this and other essays here of interest:\n“The Diary of David Beck (1624),” by Jerome Blaak, emphasizes the importance\nof egodocuments to the study of the history of reading in that period;\nand Carolyn Chappell Lougee brings that period and the late eighteenth\ncentury together in “Emigration and Memory: After 1685 and After 1789.”\nChappell Lougee takes on the huge questions of history, memory, and nation\nReviews 467\nin her treatment of memoirs, using various kinds of egodocuments to support\nher analysis of Huguenots who fled France in 1685, and those who fled the\nrevolution in 1789. In “The Limitation of Family Tradition in the Barrier\nBetween Public and Private,” which considers a parallel diary and almanac\nwritten by Karoline von Hessen-Darmstadt in multiple volumes between\n1762 and 1772, Helga Meise argues that the “almanac” is a form of egodocument\nbeginning in 1585. Meise details striking differences between the\ntwo documents as Hessen-Darmstadt’s fortunes waver in France, Russia,\nGermany, and Prussia.\nIn “Besides Benjamin Franklin: Autobiography in America, 1750–1800,”\nStephen Carl Arch offers an account of three unknown autobiographies that\npresent voices “elided by” critical tradition dominated by scholars of Rousseau\nand Franklin. Autobiographies of a working class white man, an African\nAmerican freed slave, and an independent white woman suggest, argues Arch,\n“something of the ferment that the discourse of selfhood stimulated in the\nlate eighteenth century in America.” Michael Mascuch, in “John Wesley,\nSuperstar: Periodicity, Celebrity, and the Sensibility of Methodist Society in\nWesley’s Journal (1740–1791),” challenges the dismissal of the literary and\nhistorical value of Wesley’s journals. While this essay may be of more interest\nto historians of the period and person than to auto/biography scholars, it\nraises nice questions about the construction of the celebrity—certainly a timely\nquestion for watchers of “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.” “Autobiography\nand Family Memory in the Nineteenth Century,” by Arianne\nBaggerman, tracks the collection of family archives and materials that she\nand her colleague Gerard Schulte Norholt have undertaken in the Netherlands.\nThis short (eleven pages) essay is fascinating, showing the behavior of\nfamilies from generation to generation when faced with the documents meant\nto guide, inform, or inspire them. Some take on the task of adding to the\narchive for the next generation, others censor materials pitilessly. Baggerman\nconcludes that scholars should perhaps be asking not “why people wrote\negodocuments in the past . . . but why they did not throw them away.” Gerard\nSchulte Norholt’s “Online Diaries and Websites on Egodocuments” is\nless an essay than a compilation of sites, and as such is terrifically useful. His\nsites include Philippe Lejeune’s diary, a “donttellmama” journal, and academic\nand scholarly collections of egodocuments, conferences, and journals\n(including Biography). This list, in itself, makes the collection worth having.\nAlmost all the essays in this volume fall far from my own area of study,\nyet the quality of scholarship and clarity and liveliness of the writing held my\ninterest. Moreover, I have found using the term “egodocument” increasingly\nconvenient. I expect Dekker’s aim to find greater acceptance of it will succeed.