Historians’ autobiographies as literary genre and historiographical reflection
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36561/20.6Keywords:
Academic autobiography, Intellectual History, Historiography, Literary genres, Historical narrative, Historians' subjectivityAbstract
Historians' autobiographies constitute invaluable historiographical sources during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This article examines the evolution of these autobiographical practices and their relationship to the epistemological transformations of historical discipline. Based on the analysis of approximately five hundred autobiographies by Western historians, a classification into six categories is proposed that reveals the connection between autobiographers' rhetorical and literary choices and their theoretical positions. The article identifies three generational periods: interwar era (humanistic-biographical approach), postwar period (ego-history and monograph), and post-1970s (poetic and interventionist narrative). It is argued that these autobiographies function as historiographical laboratories that allow understanding not only the intellectual formation of historians, but also the epistemological assumptions guiding contemporary historical practice. The literary form of these autobiographies reflects transformations in historiographical paradigms, making them both academic artifacts and sources of intellectual history.
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