What does «autobiografía» mean in Spanish?
- The life of a person written by him or herself. It may take the conventional narrative form or consist of a collection of letters, such as that of Pliny in antiquity, or that of Robert Louis Stevenson in the nineteenth century. It can also take the form of a diary, like that of Pepys in the 17th century, unique for its unconscious self-revelation. This diary and that of Mme. D'Arblay, from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, throw a vivid light on the history, character and manners of the period in which they were written. Among the ancients there are few examples of deliberate autobiography. In the Old Testament, the lyrical element appears in the Psalms and in Solomon's Song of Songs. In the New Testament, St. Paul is his own biographer. Xenophon and Caesar spoke of themselves in the third person. In the strict sense of the word there was no autobiography before the Christian Era and the first was the Confessions of St. Augustine (397). Its modern counterpart is the Apologia pro vita sua, by Cardinal John Henry Newman.