Pouring One's Heart Out: Textual Selves and Their Confessions

Abstract

This paper looks at the transformations of the genre of autobiography from its earliest form of confession to the later Puritan (here eighteenth century) configurations of memoirs and fictional autobiographies. Margery Kempe and Geoffrey Chaucer's Wife of Bath are chosen medieval examples, and eighteenth century textual selves are analyzed on the basis of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders. The confessional mode of writing assumes the writer 's/narrator 's utmost sincerity, hence both in medieval as well as in Puritan confessions the narrators literally pour their hearts out disclosing intimate details of their life. The difference between the two types is that medieval texts reveal sinners' personalities insignificant in God's grand plan, while the eighteenth century ones are trying to uncover the significance of individual life. .