Intimacy, Secrets and the Past: Biography in History and Fiction

Biography is one of the most popular- and controversial- modes of writing about the past and perhaps its greatest draw is in its promise to revel the otherwise sequestered details of life, its everyday secrets otherwise sequestered from view. This, of course, is also at the heart of most modern fiction, and the two modes of writing have many other similarities as well as, needless to say, differences. The rhythms of life writing in biography as well as fiction will be explored in this class, along with the difficulties (factual, ethical, and otherwise) of ferreting out the secrets of individual lives. Among the figures explored in the course will be Sigmund Freud, Sabina Spielrein, Sylvia Plath, Hannah Arendt, and Woody Allen.