True tales that nurture : defining auto/biographical storytelling

Although current usage suggests that the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are interchangeable - and as literary forms they have much in common - there are also significant differences between these two forms of life writing. This essay examines autobiography and memoir in terms of their literary heritages and narrative forms, as well as the variations of authorial intention and their reception by their readers. The popular and critical attention which these genres have received in recent decades will also be contextualised within a discussion of the current fascination with lurid, public revelation ofauto/biographical detail and of the potential of personal life narratives to function as creators of more general and universal historical meaning for readers.