The Ethics of Nonfiction: Rhetoric, Ethos, and Identity

This book explores issues of identity, ethics and epistemology that arise around the writing and reception of creative nonfiction. It examines a range of different nonfiction forms - including the personal essay and memoir - and ethical questions that arise in relation to them, such as truth claims, the confessional mode, counter-narratives. Drawing on the ideas of Bakhtin, Nietzsche and Foucault; examples from creative non-fiction writers such as Strayed and Knausgaard; and the founding principles of the originators of the genre, Seneca, Augustine and Montaigne, George Jensen argues that a limited conception of nonfiction leads to a limited view of its ethics. Writing about the truth in an authentic way is more important than ever before - and essential to this is the creation of the ethical subject.

George H. Jensen is Professor Emeritus with the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, USA. His recent books include Some of the Words Are Theirs: A Memoir of an Alcoholic Family (2000), Storytelling in Alcoholics Anonymous: A Rhetorical Analysis (2000), and Identities Across Texts (2002).