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CREATIVITY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY
History of Autobiography
Everyone has a story, Everyone needs a voice.
“What makes people despair is that they try to find a universal meaning to the whole of life, and then end up by saying it is absurd, illogical, empty of meaning. There isnot one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.” Anais Nin
We need not measure ourselves by the experience of others, but rather we need seek and speak our own unique truth.
ANAIS NIN
Born in France
Multicultural Family Upbringing
Self Taught
Abandoned by her father when very young
Distraught , she began a Diary as a letter to her estranged father
Became a famous 20th century writer of poetry and prose, a continuous novel exploring the inner lives of women.
Feminist
Most famous for her Diaries which spanned from childhood to the day she died.
CREATIVITY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN HISTORY 17,300 years ago 900 works of art embedded deep within
the earth.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/lasc/hd_lasc.htm
http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/Images/countries/French%20pics/lascauxmap.gif
Another map view
Pigments made from minerals and include red, yellow, black, brown, and violet.
Painting tools may have been made from strips of moss or hair or chalk-like chunks of stone or raw color.
“The surfaces appear to have been covered by paint blown directly from the mouth or through a tube; color-stained, hollowed-out bones have been found in the caves.”
http://www.lascaux.culture.fr/index.php?lng=en
ANCIENT HAND PRINTS
Mysterious and beautiful images embedded in dark caves reveal the attempts of humans to speak of their lives
ANCIENT EGYPT
“ the furnishings for a rich man’s tomb included statues and pictures of himself, and a first person account of his life carved on tablets and walls. Tristine Rainer – Your Life as Story
Pharoh Narmer Menes
THE PALATTE OF NARMER MENES
CHRONICLES THE PHAROH’S TRIUMPH OF THE UNIFICATION OF UPPER AND LOWER EGYPT
“ In the era of the New Kingdom mummies were entombed with their autobiographies clutched to their breasts.” Tristine Rainer – Your Life as Story
Some mummies show tatoos. Are these part of their stories?
WENI THE ELDER TOMB ENSCRIPTION
Everyone who has studied ancient Egyptian history is familiar with the autobiography of Weni the Elder, an enterprising individual who lived during the 6th Dynasty of the Old Kingdom (ca. 2407-2260 BCE). His inscription, excavated in 1860 from his tomb in the low desert at Abydos in southern Egypt, enthusiastically describes his long service under three kings, culminating in his appointment as "True Governor of Upper Egypt."
http://www.umich.edu/~kelseydb/Publications/spring2000/abydos.html
EARLY CHRISTIAN MEMOIRS
The Confessions of St. Augustine – An “admission of his sins and his longing for God”
WENI THE ELDER’S TRANSLATION
Autobiographical writings of ancient Eqyptians were meant to accompany them to the afterworld as testaments of their good deeds to deem them worthy of entry into heaven.
EARLY CHRISTIAN MEMOIRSST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE
Born November 13, 354 AD within Roman Empire in Africa
– An “admission of his sins and his longing for God”
Shift from singing one’s praises to humbling oneself in the sight of God
But my sin was this, that I looked for pleasure, beauty, and truth not in him but in myself and his other creatures, and the search led me instead to pain, confusion, and error. (I.20.1)
SECULAR AUTOBIOGRAPHIES 16TH C
Benvenuto Celini Florence Renaissance
Goldsmith/Sculptor
Writing shifts to a focus on the exploits of the self with an ample
Sampling of bragadocio
Cellini’s stories are filled with
Swashbuckling stories
Adventure, and tales of ego.
This man who tells here the story of his life was a murderer and a braggart, insolent, sensual, inordinately proud and passionate…John A. Symonds Introduction
UNITED STATES – EX SLAVE NARRATIVES
Approximately four million Americans enslaved in the United States were freed at the conclusion of the American Civil War. The stories of a few thousand have been passed on to future generations through word of mouth, diaries, letters, records, or written transcripts of interviews.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/voices/title.html
FEMINIST MEMOIRS
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Stanton (1815–1902)Feminist Abolitionist 1830s and 1840sChronicled in her autobiography her growing awareness and activism regarding civil and women’s rights.
ONE OF THE EARLIEST KNOWN AUTOBIOGRAPHIES BY AN AFRICAN WOMANAUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN AFRICAN PRINCESS
The book follows Massaquoi, born the daughter of the King of Gallinas of Southern Sierra Leone in 1904, to Liberia, Nazi Germany and the segregated American South, where she wrote her memoirs while enrolled at Tennessee's Fisk University.
FIRST AFRICAN FEMALE AUTOBIOGRAPHERBorn to an African king in colonial Sierra Leone at the
beginning of the twentieth century, Princess Fatima Massaquoi lived an extraordinary life that encapsulated the contradictions, upheavals, and unprecedented opportunities of her time.
Beginning with her lovingly recounted memories of growing up in Liberia, it follows her to Hamburg, Germany, where she pursued an education and forged friendships, but also experienced the racism, terror, and nationalistic fervor that accompanied the Nazis' rise to power.
In the face of these mounting dangers, Massaquoi traveled to the United States, where she furthered her studies, …embracing her newfound freedom even as she observed deteriorating conditions in the segregated American South in the early years of the civil rights movement.
Spanning continents and cultures, this narrative introduces us to a truly remarkable woman while offering a fascinating window into the complex history of the twentieth century.
KILROY WAS A GRAFFITI CHARACTER ASSOCIATED WITH THE GIS OF WWII
Engraving of Kilroy on the WWII Memorial in Washington DC
SWOON AND THE SECRET
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5298KZuW_JE
“The Genesis of Possible Worlds”
…maybe there’s kind of a slightly different world existing right where we are and your just need to have a sort of perceptual shift in order to see it”
POEM FROM RECENTLY DISCOVERED JOURNAL OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIATA narrative poem
from his journal alluding to the trials of addiction and the creative process
UNDISCOVERED GENIUS OF THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/30/undiscovered-genius-of-the-mississippi-delta_n_5234962.htm
Many Stories Many Roads to Speak Your Truth
- Creativity and autobiography go hand in hand
- Creativity is autobiographywhether the story is embedded in image or text
-Truth vs FictionBoth have their placeAutobiography draws from both fact and imagination
- In this course you are encouraged to approach autobiographical writing from many perspectives.
- As you explore your own stories you are welcome to explore your facts, your myths, your dreams, your imaginings…
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