Some recent British memoirs or autobiographies are discussed, focusing on narrative structure, using theories developed by Bernstein, Ricoeur, Cavarero and others to explore the relationship between `life', `story' and the effects of emplotment. Writing the lives of others, it is argued, always has an ethical dimension, as the writer is able to take advantage of the hindsight not available to his or her subjects — here parents or grandparents. The means by which the writers concerned negotiate this privilege of hindsight, and the implications of the narrative choices they inevitably have to make, are explained.
Bernstein, M.A. (1994) Foregone Conclusions: Against Apocalyptic History . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
2.
Brooks, P. (1992[1984]) Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press.
3.
Cavarero, A. (2000[1997]) Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood (P.A. Kottman, trans.). London: Routledge.
4.
Eakin, P.J. (1999) HoW Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
5.
Erlich, V. (1991) Russian Formalism: History - Doctine (3rd edition). New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
6.
Jacobson, D. (1999[1998]) Heshel's Kingdom. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
7.
Kermode, F. (1988[1966]) The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
8.
King, N. (2004) `Structures of Autobiographical Narrative: Lisa Appignanesi, Dan Jacobson, W. G. Sebald', Comparative Critical Studies1(3): 265-77.
9.
Lott, T. (1997[1996]) The Scent of Dried Roses. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
10.
Morrison, B. (1993) And When Did You Last See Your Father?Harmondsworth: Granta.
11.
Morrison, B. (2003[2002]) Things My Mother Never Told Me. London: Vintage.
12.
Morson, G.S. (1994) Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time. New Haven: Yale University Press.
13.
Ricoeur, P. (1984[1983], 1985[1984]) Time and Narrative (Vols 1 and 2) (K. McLaughlin and D. Pellauer, trans.) . Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press.
14.
Ricoeur, P. (1992) Oneself as Another (K. Blamey, trans.). Chicago, IL, and London: University of Chicago Press.
