SOURCE: "Autobiography and the American Myth," in American Quarterly, Vol. XVII, No. 3, Fall, 1965, pp. 501-19.

In the following essay, Spengemann and Lundquist relate American autobiographical writings to the development of the American cultural myth that "in its most general form, describes human history as a pilgrimage from imperfection to perfection. "

Like all of our imaginative writers, American autobiographers have traditionally drawn their materials from the fund of metaphors which grow out of our shared experiences, assumptions and beliefs—the American myth. The main difference between American autobiographers and writers of fiction is that the autobiographers have employed these metaphors in self-scrutiny and self-portrayal rather than in the presentation of fictional characters, but the resulting creation lends itself to cultural analysis as readily as purely fictional characters do. The created character in both cases represents values that are recognized by the reading audience at large. A consideration of several...