Confessional writing is a literary style and genre that developed in American writing schools following the Second World War. Confessional writing also has historical origins in Catholic confessional practices. As such, confessional writing is congruent with psychoanalytic literary criticism. Confessional writing is also a form of life writing, especially through the autobiography form. Confessional writing often employs colloquial speech and direct language to invoke an immediacy between reader and author. Confessional writers also use this direct language to radically reduce the distance between the speaker-persona of a text and the writer's personal voice. Confessional writing can also be fictive, such as in the hybrid form of the roman à clef.
Though originating in American literary circles, by writers and poets such as Adrienne Rich, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton, the style has gained global use concurrently with the growth of Postcolonial theory at the end of the 20th century, especially throughout Eurasia and the Middle East. Confessional writing has also influenced other mediums, including the visual arts and reality television.
A highly influential movement, confessional writing has been critiqued as narcissistic, self-indulgent, as well as a violation of the privacy of the private individuals which confessional writers depict.
Development of the confessional writing genre
thumb|A photograph of [[Ludwig Wittgenstein, taken in 1930. Wittgenstein theorised on the psychological implications and mechanisms of confession as a cathartic act.|left|233x233px]]
The confessional writing genre has historical roots in Catholic confessional practices.
In the early 20th century, the growth of psychoanalysis increased academic interest in the psychological functions of confession itself. Following their expatriation from wartime continental Europe to the United Kingdom and United States during the Second World War, eminent psychoanalytical theorists including Sigmund Freud, Heinz Hartmann, Ernst Kris, Rudolph Loewenstein, and Ludwig Wittgenstein began to theorise on the defence functions of ego in times of conflict. Wittgenstein expounded on confession as a 'means of self-development,' in that the catharsis facilitated by the act of confession allowed for closure, and the progression away from both unconscious and conscious suffering: writing in 1931 that 'a confession must be part of your new life.'
The literary 'confessional' term was first attributed to a form of writing in 1959: by critic M.L. Rosenthal in response to the confessional poet Robert Lowell's seminal anthology Life Studies. The anthology is widely regarded as a seminal confessional text, in the poet's revelations on his relationship to his parents, marital conflict, depression, and generational trauma. Though the style has since gained global use (See: Global influence), confessional writing emerged in America during the turbulent late 1950s and early 1960s, and was initially characterised by movements away from strictly metred verse to free verse. induced writers to externalise their internal, psychological anxieties and angsts the Civil rights movement, the Gay Rights Movement, and the onset of Second Wave Feminism and Postcolonialism.
Contemporary confessional works encompass broader social issues, including drug-use, digital identity, popular culture, and political engagement. including personal secrets and controversial perspectives in forms such as autobiography, diary, memoir, and also epistolary narratives. as well as empowerment, self-expression, and liberation.
Robert Lowell's Life Studies, an autobiographical suite of poems detailing Lowell's upbringing and personal family life, is often regarded as the seminal confessional work. The novel blends elements of fiction and non-fiction within the parameters of the confessional genre, by representing real people and events through a fictive façade: Mademoiselle magazine is replaced with the fictional Ladies' Day magazine, and Plath's own experience is surrogated by the protagonist, Esther Greenwood's perspective. Plath also initially published the novel under the pseudonym, 'Victoria Lucas.'
More recent works of confessional writing include Codeine Diary, by Tom Andrews, a personal account of living with the disease haemophilia; Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino¸ a confessional blend of personal essay and social criticism concerning the rise of the internet during the 1990s and early 2000s, as well as the fallacious digital identities which social media is productive of; Before I Say Goodbye by Ruth Picardie, a memoir of her terminal illness with breast cancer;
Global influences and iterations
thumb|A photograph of [[Robert Lowell, a prominent and seminal confessional writer.|189x189px]]Though originating in American literary circles, the confessional writing style has gained global use with the growth of Postcolonial theory and globalisation at the end of the 20th century,
Souvankham Thammavongsa's poetic anthology Small Arguments uses features of confessional writing in a 'subtle probing of the world' to depict the refugee experience in Canada and concerns of self-determination.
A Mountainous Journey by Fadwa Tuqan investigates the struggles of the Palestinian people, through a confessional, intimate perspective, to challenge the patriarchal and colonial hegemonies which problematise the endurance of her people, and the place of women in Islamic society.
My Bed is a confessional artwork by Tracey Emin: depicting a dishevelled bed stained with bodily secretions and surrounded by personal effects including empty vodka bottles, condoms, and menstrual-blood-stained undergarments. The artwork caused public outcry and controversy: employing features of the confessional style — including the presentation of intimate personal effects and socially taboo objects —in challenging the acceptable limits of personal and artistic representation.
French artist Louise Bourgeois also explored elements of confessional writing throughout her body of work, especially through representing her relationships with family members. Bourgeois' 1974 tableau The Destruction of the Father psychologically explored the artist's relationship to her father through biomorphic and phallic objects, presented in a crime-scene scenario – the implication being that the child has cannibalised their overbearing father. The spider motif throughout Bourgeois' art, including in the Maman sculpture series, alludes to Bourgeois' relationship to her mother, and the nourishment and protection it was productive of.
Candy Cheng's art installation Confessions, which has been exhibited across America, Central and Eastern Europe, invited viewers and members of the public to write anonymous confessions onto a wooden board and hang their confession on the work itself, with emphasis on features typical to the confessional writing genre including the catharsis of the act of confession, and the desire to reveal secrets.
Fun Home and Are You My Mother? are both memoirs by American cartoonist Alison Bechdel, which incorporate features of confessional writing through the graphic novel medium.
Academics have also expounded on the self-performativity and confession-based format of reality television shows such as Big Brother as having roots in the confessional writing genre.
Criticisms of the confessional writing genre
thumb|[[Michel Foucault in 1974. Foucault theorised on confession as an oppressive, hegemonic condition]]
A highly influential movement, confessional writing has been critiqued as narcissistic, self-indulgent, as well as a violation of the privacy of the private individuals which confessional writers depict. as well as lacking diverse social and cultural perspectives.
Further, theorist Michel Foucault explicated that confession, as an act inherent to the social structures of law, medicine, and faith, is a consolidated act of social oppression: confining subjects within traditional hegemonies of shame, guilt, and socially-constructed requirements of forgiveness.
Feminist discourse is separated on the mode: whilst some theorists regard the depiction of issues such as sexual violence, eating disorders, and mental illness by female confessional writers as liberating, others view it as voyeuristic and objectifying.
See also
- Confessional poetry
- Life writing
- Robert Lowell
- Postmodernism