Memoirs and Morals –
Writing the first person
Almost everyone with any claim to fame (and many others without) have taken up the pen to produce a memoir – a narrative in the first person told from memory and professing to be true. But almost since the beginning of the appearance of this type of writing, the genre has been plagued with controversy and questions about its claim to truth and the very ethics of the enterprise, centered is, on the self. This recently came to the fore again in a controversy over a prison memoir set in Iran which was challenged both for its accuracy and its political and ethical implications.
Together we will read excerpts from some important memoirs, confessions and autobiographies in order to examine
a number of the key issues raised by them: What types of truth claims do they make and why? Is there a hierarchy of truth that justifies falsehood? What is the connection between memory and imagination? Between memories and self understanding?
WHEN I RELIGIOUSLY CONFESS MYSELF TO MYSELF, I FIND THAT
THE BEST VIRTUE I HAVE HAS IN IT SOME TINCTURE OF VICE.”
Michel de Montaigne
LEADER
Nella Cotrupi is a lawyer, writer and educator who hopes to never feel the need to write a memoir.
BOOKS
Selections from St. Augustine’s Confessions, Michel de Montaigne’s essays, Blaise Pascal’s Thoughts, Rousseau’s Confessions, and Raimond Gaita's Romulus, My Father.
Selections will be posted on the website for download in January 2009. | 
