autobiographical memory and the construction of a narrative self: developmental and cultural perspectives

Robyn Fivush, Catherine A. Haden

Psychology Press, Mar 1, 2003 - Psychology - 240 pages

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It is a truism in psychology that self and autobiographical memory are linked, yet we still know surprisingly little about the nature of this relation. Scholars from multiple disciplines, including cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, anthropology, and philosophy have begun theorizing and writing about the ways in which autobiographical memory is organized, the role that narratives play in the development of autobiographical memory, and the relations between autobiographical memory, narrative, and self concept. If narratives are a critical link between memory and self, then it becomes apparent that the roles of language and social interaction are paramount. These are the issues addressed in this volume. Although individual authors offer their own unique perspectives in illuminating the nature of the link between self and memory, the contributors share a perspective that both memory and self are constructed through specific forms of social interactions and/or cultural frameworks that lead to the formation of an autobiographical narrative. Taken together, the chapters weave a coherent story about how each of us creates a life narrative embedded in social-cultural frameworks that define what is appropriate to remember, how to remember it, and what it means to be a self with an autobiographical past.

the sinister way: the divine and the demonic in chinese religious culture

Richard Von Glahn

University of California Press, Apr 20, 2004 - History - 385 pages

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Excellent stone engraving from a late Han tomb of Queen Mother of the West with auspicious nin-tailed fox (p 60)


The most striking feature of Wutong, the preeminent God of Wealth in late imperial China, was the deity's diabolical character. Wutong was perceived not as a heroic figure or paragon of noble qualities but rather as an embodiment of humanity's basest vices, greed and lust, a maleficent demon who preyed on the weak and vulnerable. In The Sinister Way, Richard von Glahn examines the emergence and evolution of the Wutong cult within the larger framework of the historical development of Chinese popular or vernacular religion--as opposed to institutional religions such as Buddhism or Daoism. Von Glahn's study, spanning three millennia, gives due recognition to the morally ambivalent and demonic aspects of divine power within the common Chinese religious culture.

the emerging lesbian: female same-sex desire in modern china

Tze-lan Deborah Sang

3 Reviews

University of Chicago Press, Jan 15, 2003 - Social Science - 380 pages

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Very good chapter on lesbian relationships in Strange stories pp 86-88

In early-century China, age-old traditions of homosocial and homoerotic relationships between women suddenly became an issue of widespread public concern. Discussed formerly in terms of friendship and sisterhood, these relationships came to be associated with feminism, on the one hand, and psychobiological perversion, on the othera radical shift whose origins have long been unclear. In this first ever book-length study of Chinese lesbians, Tze-lan D. Sang convincingly ties the debate over female same-sex love in China to the emergence of Chinese modernity. As women's participation in social, economic, and political affairs grew, Sang argues, so too did the societal significance of their romantic and sexual relations. Focusing especially on literature by or about women-preferring women, Sang traces the history of female same-sex relations in China from the late imperial period (1600-1911) through the Republican era (1912-1949). She ends by examining the reemergence of public debate on lesbians in China after Mao and in Taiwan after martial law, including the important roles played by globalization and identity politics.

books that may or not have be on the shelves of a scholar’s beijing studio

Traditions of Exemplary Transcendents (Lexian zhuan) ... Liu Xiang

Traditions of Divine Transcendents (Shenxian zhuan) ... Ge Hong

The Master Who Embraces Simplicity: Inner Chapters (Baopuzi neipian) ... Ge Hong

Arguments Weighed (Lunheng) ... Wang Cong

Resolving Doubts (Shiyi lin) ... Cao Zhi

Disputations on the Dao (Biandao lun) ... Cao Zhi

Record of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo zhi) by Chen

History of the Later Han (Hou Han shu) ... Fan Ye

Annotated Classic on Waterways (Shuijing zhu) ... Li Daoyuan

Compendium of Observational and Computational Astronomy

Essentials of Elementary Learning and Selections from the Zhuang Zi and Lie Zi ... Pu Songling

The Handbook for Scholars on Essentials of Daily Life and Intellectual Activities ... Pu Songling

The Guideways of Mountains and Seas

Classified Materia Medica (Bencao gangmu) ... Li Shizen

The Complete Mastery of Correct Characters ... Zhengzi tong

The Etiology and Symptomatology of All Diseases ... Zhubing yuanhou lun

Secret Prescriptions of the Outer Tower (Aitai biyao)

Useless Gourd Collection ... Chu Renhuo

Random Jottings at the Cottage of Close Scrutiny ... Ji Yun

A Comprehensive Catalogue of Chinese Collections

The Classic of Spirits and Anomolies

Forest of Talk

Records of Miraculous Omens (Mingxiang ji) ... Wang Yan

Biographies of Immortals (Shenxian zhuan) ... Ge Hong

Studio of Leasure ... Ji Yun

Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou meng) ... Cao Xueqin

Categorised Records at an Overgrown Window (Pengchuang leiji) by Huang Wei

Unofficial History of the Scholars (Rulin waishi) ... Wu Jingzi

Record of Spending the Summer at Luanyang (Luanyang xiaoxialu) ... Ji Yun

Strange Talk from the Three Brushes (Sanbi yitan) ... Xu Yuanzhong

Accounts of Anomalies Heard and Seen (Wenjian yici) ... Xu Qiuzhai

Records of Rainy Nights under the Autumn Lamp (Yeyu qiudeng lu) ... Xuan Ding

What the Master Would Not Discuss (Zi bu yu) ... Yuan Mei

Unauthorised Compilations of Willow Cliff (Liuya waiban) ... Xu Kun

Occasional Accounts of Conversations at Night (Yetan suilu) ... He Bang

Words of Humour from an Ancient Bell (Xie duo) ... Shen Qifeng

Hearsay Accounts (Ershi lu) ... Yue Jun

New Words on the Autumnal Plains (Qiuping xinyu) ... Zhang Jingyun

Records of the Wildly Improbable (Wangwang lu) ... Zhu Hai

Miscellaneous Comments at the Hut of Dreams (Meng’an zazhu) ... Yu Jiao

Exotic Grass of the Glow-worm Window (Yingchuang yicao) ... Changbai Haogezi

Leftover Wine in the Goblets (Gusheng)

Discourses at Footwear Garden (Luyuan conghua) ... Qian Yong

proust's way: a field guide to In search of lost time

Roger Shattuck

10 Reviews

W. W. Norton & Company, Aug 1, 2001 - Literary Criticism - 290 pages


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For any reader who has been humbled by the language, the density, or the sheer weight of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, Roger Shattuck is a godsend. Winner of the National Book Award for Marcel Proust, a sweeping examination of Proust's life and works, Shattuck now offers a useful and eminently readable guidebook to Proust's epic masterpiece, and a contemplation of memory and consciousness throughout great literature. Here, Shattuck laments Proust's defenselessness against zealous editors, praises some translations, and presents Proust as a novelist whose philosophical gifts were matched only by his irrepressible comic sense. Proust's Way, the culmination of a lifetime of scholarship, will serve as the next generation's guide to one of the world's finest writers of fiction.

architexts of memory: literature, science, and autobiography

Evelyne Ender

University of Michigan Press, 2005 - Literary Criticism - 305 pages

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In this impressively interdisciplinary study, Evelyne Ender revisits master literary works to suggest that literature can serve as an experimental laboratory for the study of human remembrance. She shows how memory not only has a factual basis but is inseparable from fictional and aesthetic elements. Beautifully written in accessible prose, and impressive in its scope, the book takes up works by Proust, Woolf, George Eliot, Nerval, Lou Andreas-Salome, and Sigmund Freud, getting to the heart of essential questions about mental images, empirical knowledge, and the devastations of memory loss in ways that are suggestive and profound. Architexts of Memory joins a growing body of work in the lively field of memory studies, drawing from clinical psychology, psychoanalysis, and neurobiology as well as literary studies.

"An important, cogently argued, subtle and rich study of a topic of great interest."
--Mieke Bal, University of Amsterdam

"A work of literary studies positioned at the intersection of tradition and innovation. Evelyne Ender's book brings fashionable cultural concerns to bear on traditional literary texts-her superb pedagogical skills lure and guide the reader through the most difficult psychoanalytical concepts."
--Nelly Furman, Cornell University


Selected Chapters:
The Aroma of the past: Marcel Proust and the Science of Memory


Painting the Past: Virginia Woolf's Memory Images


Proustian Memory Gardens

literary memory: scott's waverley novels and the the psychology of narrative

Catherine Jones

0 Reviews

Bucknell University Press, 2003 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 249 pages

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This book draws together three different but related kinds of inquiry. First, it approaches the history and theory of memory in the long eighteenth century to focus on the philosophical and literary writing of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment Scotland. Debates about the significance and working of memory and the nature of cognition were recurrent and contentious throughout the period, and were particularly pronounced in Scotland, where the psychological tradition of Common Sense philosophy developed in response to the skeptical metaphysics of David Hume. This book examines the importance of these debates for the literature and culture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: Walter Scott is exemplary, as his thinking about memory was conditioned by the epistemological arguments of the Scottish Enlightenment. Second, it studies Scott's rhetoric of memory and his engagement with, and transformation of, Enlightenment psychological categories, most significantly in the Waverley Novels. Finally, this book is concerned with the role of memory in literary creativity.