The Diary: The Epic of Everyday Life

The diary as a genre is found in all literate societies, and these autobiographical accounts are written by persons of all ranks and positions. The Diary offers an exploration of the form in its social, historical, and cultural-literary contexts with its own distinctive features, poetics, and rhetoric. The contributors to this volume examine theories and interpretations relating to writing and studying diaries; the formation of diary canons in the United Kingdom, France, United States, and Brazil; and the ways in which handwritten diaries are transformed through processes of publication and digitization. The authors also explore different diary formats, including the travel diary, the private diary, conflict diaries written during periods of crisis, and the diaries of the digital era, such as blogs. The Diary offers a comprehensive overview of the genre, synthesizing decades of interdisciplinary study to enrich our understanding of, research about, and engagement with the diary as literary form and historical documentation.

Author: Batsheva Ben-Amos
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 03/10/2020
Pages: 492
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 2.36lbs
Size: 10.00h x 7.00w x 1.50d
ISBN: 9780253046987

About the Author

Batsheva Ben-Amos is Adjunct Professor of Comparative Literature in the College of Professional and Liberal Arts at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a practicing clinician and has written about Holocaust diaries. Dan Ben-Amos is Professor of Folklore and Comparative Literature in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania. He is author of numerous titles, including Sweet Words, Folklore in Context, Jewish Folk Literature, ( in Hebrew and Russian), and a translator of In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov (with Jerome R.Mintz). He is editor of Folklore Genres, Folktales of the Jews (volumes 1-3 ), Folklore: Performance and Communication (with Kenneth S. Goldstein) and of Cultural Memory and the Construction of Identity (with Liliane Weissberg).