What autobiographical memory researchers might learn from literary autobiographers: The cases of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Elias Canetti

In recent years, several psychologists have emphasised the importance that literary autobiographies have for a better understanding of memory phenomena. However, their arguments were limited to a general recognition of the potential role played by these works taken as a whole. In the present article, I briefly explore the autobiographies of two great men of letters – that is, the writer and philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Nobel Prize in Literature winner Elias Canetti – from an autobiographical memory researcher’s point of view. Based on the analysis of a handful of excerpts from their works, I argue that literary autobiographies are useful tools for investigating the metacognitive knowledge that autobiographers gain about their memory, while providing ground for indirect testing of scientific findings that contemporary psychologists have acquired about autobiographical memory. In the conclusions, I provide some tentative suggestions to future researchers who wish to delve into the empirical study of literary autobiographies.