Életirás, társadalmi nemek és trauma

In this study I discuss the interdisciplinary and broadly inclusive genre designation “life writing,” which by expanding generic boundaries can move outside of the canonical constraints of traditional autobiography. Feminist criticism early on perceived traditional definitions of autobiography as masculinist and tried to redefine the canon to fit the different pattern of women's lives, showing that the overhaul of the term "autobiography" and the works it legitimized was needed. Scholarly interest in life writing has also burgeoned in the last decades of the twentieth century not only owing both to the impetus of feminist studies but also to the interdisciplinary turn in literature and cultural studies and the concomitant interest in postmodern issues of subjectivity, the body, identity, memory, trauma studies, disability studies, and the concern for the uneasy relationship between ethical positions and the aesthetic of literary works, among other theoretical issues. Today various subgenres of life writing ar