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Description of  Gandhi s Autobiographical Construction of Selfhood: The Story of His Experiments with Truth

3031227859 pdf This book addresses the topics of autobiography, self-representation and status as a writer in Mahatma Gandhi's autobiographical work The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1927, 1929). Gandhi remains an elusive figure, despite the volumes of literature written on him in the seven decades since his assassination. Scholars and biographers alike agree that no work on his life has portrayed him in totality (Desai, 2009), and, although arguably the most popular figure of the first half of the twentieth century and one of the most eminent luminaries of our time, Gandhi the individual remains as much an enigma as a person of endless fascination (Murrell, 2008). Yet there has been relatively little scholarly engagement with Gandhis autobiography, and published output has largely been concerned with mining the text for its biographical details, with little concern for how Gandhi represents himself. The author addresses this gap in the literature, while also considering Gandhi as a writer. This book provides a close reading of the linguistic structure of the text with particular focus upon Gandhis self-representation, drawing on a cognitive stylistic framework for analysing linguistic representations of selfhood (Emmott 2002). It will be of interest to stylisticians, cognitive linguists, discourse analysts, and scholars in related fields such as Indian literature and postcolonial studies. Read more