Geografia confesiunii: între document, ficțiune și construcție identitară
The Geography of Confessional Literature: Between Document, Fiction and Identity Construction

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the complex territory of confessional literature, focusing on the distinctions and overlaps among autobiography, diary writing, and memoirs. While often grouped under the broad category of “life writing,” these forms resist strict classification due to their hybrid nature and their fluctuating position between document and literary construction. Autobiography is defined as a retrospective, carefully structured narrative addressed to a wide audience and grounded in the autobiographical pact, through which the author seeks to transform a life into a coherent destiny. The diary, by contrast, emphasizes immediacy, fragmentation, and self-directed dis-course, cultivating the illusion of unmediated authenticity. Memoirs position the author as a double witness – to personal experience and to historical time – prioritizing the representation of the surrounding world and its events.Despite their differences, these genres coexist within a fluid continuum where boundaries remain porous and narrative strategies often intersect. Confession constitutes their unifying core, though sincerity itself cannot be measured; instead, the credibility and aesthetic force of the narrative determine literary value. The contemporary expansion of confessional writing reflects a growing cultural interest in introspection, individuality, and the reconstruction of personal identity. Situated between fact and fiction, life writing not only challenges traditional genre hierarchies but also confirms its central role in understanding how individuals articulate their relationship to themselves and to history.

• Details
• Contents