Introduction: The question of genre -- Writing, psychoanalysis, and the problem of the subject -- From Wordsworth to Barthes: the historical argument -- 1. The wavering balance: Wordsworth's journey through The prelude: The philosophical moment: Hegel and the aesthetics of self-creation -- The theory of The prelude -- The composition of The prelude -- 2. Something evermore about to be: "Wordsworth" and the poetics of revision: Repetition, recollection, and the art of forgetting -- From blindness to insight -- 3. Carlyle and Nietzsche: the subject retailored: Sartor resartus and the mystification of autobiography -- History as dramatic narrative -- 4. A Portrait of the artist as a young man: the art of fictional self-representation -- 5. Self-representation and the limits of narrative: Joyce and Proust: the theory of fictional autobiography -- The education of Henry Adams: multiplicity, chaos, and the self-reflexive experiment -- 6. A strange mimesis: the discourse of fragmentation: Paul Val(c)♭ry's Moi: self-representation as auto-philosophy -- T.S. Eliot's Four quartets: retrospection and the poetry of deferral -- Roland Barthes's Roland Barthes: disorder and the destiny of the subject.
Introduction:The question of genre -- Writing, psychoanalysis, and the problem of the subject -- From Wordsworth to Barthes: the historical argument -- 1.The wavering balance: Wordsworth's journey through The prelude:The philosophical moment: Hegel and the aesthetics of self-creation -- The theory of The prelude -- The composition of The prelude -- 2.Something evermore about to be: "Wordsworth" and the poetics of revision:Repetition, recollection, and the art of forgetting -- From blindness to insight -- 3.Carlyle and Nietzsche: the subject retailored:Sartor resartus and the mystification of autobiography -- History as dramatic narrative -- 4.A Portrait of the artist as a young man: the art of fictional self-representation -- 5.Self-representation and the limits of narrative:Joyce and Proust: the theory of fictional autobiography -- The education of Henry Adams: multiplicity, chaos, and the self-reflexive experiment -- 6.A strange mimesis: the discourse of fragmentation:Paul Valéry's Moi: self-representation as auto-philosophy -- T.S. Eliot's Four quartets: retrospection and the poetry of deferral -- Roland Barthes's Roland Barthes: disorder and the destiny of the subject.
