Self-Preservation: Autobiography as a Form of Archivization as Seen Through the Life and Poetic Works of John Clare

Author

Meghan J. Slaff, University at Albany, State University of New YorkFollow

Date of Award

Spring 2025

Language

English

Embargo Period

5-1-2025

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

College/School/Department

Department of English

Program

English

First Advisor

Kir Kuiken

Second Advisor

Helen Elam

Committee Members

Ineke Murakami

Keywords

autobiography, archives, poetry, postmodernism, preservation

Subject Categories

Archival Science | Literature in English, British Isles | Other Arts and Humanities | Reading and Language

Abstract

This paper will look at how the processing efforts of an archivist mirror that of an autobiographer through the shared motivation of adding to the cultural memory or textual canon of a society. For archival purposes, the typical steps of ingesting, preparing, and presenting a collection are creation, capture, arrangement/description, and pluralization. To create an autobiography, writers take the memories that have been created and experienced due to events in their lives and capture those memories via recording in the literary form known as autobiography. These autobiographers then arrange and describe their memories in a way that shows vast similarities to those utilized in archival work and then share the contained body with the world through publication, their own form of pluralization of their records. Through Jacques Derrida’s understanding of the archive, a postmodernist whose Archive Fever was revolutionary to contemporary understanding of the archive and the vast possibilities of what can constitute as a record, the shared limitations of both autobiography and archivization, which perhaps join the two more than any common formation efforts, will be explored. This theory of archivization as a form of autobiography will be tested against the life and creative efforts of “Peasant Poet” John Clare, who spent his life attempting to contain his memories , of the nature that he knew in his childhood, the nature of Helpston, via the aforementioned process of archivization, albeit unknowingly, in an attempt to save it from the forgetfulness of Derrida’s oblivion.

License

This work is licensed under the University at Albany Standard Author Agreement.

Recommended Citation

Slaff, Meghan J., "Self-Preservation: Autobiography as a Form of Archivization as Seen Through the Life and Poetic Works of John Clare" (2025). Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present). 218.
https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/etd/218