Modern Confessional Writing

by Jo Gill (editor)

A comprehensive and scholarly account of this popular and influential genre, the essays in this collection explore confessional literature from the mid-twentieth century to the present day, and include the writing of John Berryman, Anne Sexton, Ted Hughes and Helen Fielding. Drawing on a wide range of examples, the contributors to this volume evaluate and critique conventional readings of confessionalism. Orthodox, humanist notions of the literary act of confession and its assumed relationship to truth, authority and subjectivity are challenged, and in their place a range of new critical perspectives and practices are adopted. Modern Confessional Writing develops and tests new theoretically-informed views on what confessional writing is, how it functions, and what it means to both writer and reader. When read from these new perspectives modern confessional writing is liberated from the misconception that it provides a kind of easy authorial release and readerly catharsis, and is instead read as a discursive, self-reflexive, sophisticated and demanding genre.

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Professor Jo Gill completed her first degree at the University of Leicester, her MA at York University and her PhD at the University of Gloucestershire. She worked in publishing for several years before commencing research for a PhD and taking up an academic career. She specialises in modern and contemporary literature with a particular interest in confessional and life writing, mid-century American poetry, the cultures of the American suburbs and literature and architecture. She is Chair of Governors at Richard Huish Sixth Form College, Taunton.