ABSTRACT
Defi nitions of autobiography have never proved to be defi nitive, but they are instructive in refl ecting characteristic assumptions about what may well be considered the main aspects of this literary genre. One of the best-known definitions was formulated by Philippe Lejeune in the 1970s in his famous essay “The Autobiographical Pact”: “Retrospective prose narrative written by a real person concerning his own existence, where the focus is his individual life, in particular the story of his personality” (4). Lejeune also stresses the existence of an identity between author and narrator on the one hand, and narrator and protagonist on the other. Through this, Lejeune reveals the commitment by theorists of autobiography to the referentiality of the autobiographical text, demonstrating the conceptual impasse they are faced with. As cognitive and memory studies have shown, autobiographical memory belongs to the realm of “higher-order consciousness.” It involves the ability to construct a socially based selfhood, to model the world in terms of past and future, and to be directly aware that every recollection is a kind of perception, and every context will alter the nature of what is recalled.1 This description infers the ability to step back from the immediacy of a situation and refl ect upon past events. Moreover, in order to understand the specifi c features of autobiographical memories, the acquisition of Theory of Mind, i.e., the ability to distinguish one’s own experiences from other people’s experiences, is essential.
