In the West, many examples of life writing do not fit all aspects of the traditional definition, such as memoirs of only a portion of a person's life, accounts in poetry, and diaries and journals that reflect day-by-day introspection rather than a retrospective view of an entire life. Many non-Western texts disclose the author's religious experiences, although they are usually less concerned with distinguishing the author's uniqueness or singularity than they are with exemplifying a collective sense of identity, a community's values, or the common human condition. One must be flexible in recognizing the diverse forms of writing about the self in the world's religious traditions and discern both similarities and differences in relation to the classical Western tradition of autobiography. What makes an autobiography religious is the author's attempt to describe and evaluate his or her life from the perspective of the author's present convictions about what is ultimate or sacred.
Classic Christian Autobiographies
Augustine's Confessions, written between 397 and 401, is the fountainhead of Christian autobiography. Augustine (354–430) showed later writers how to interpret the self in relation to the models and norms of Christian tradition, including biblical figures such as Adam, Moses, Jesus, and Paul. Augustine's self-disclosure is indebted to two biblical genres: the Hebrew psalms and Pauline letters.
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