confession

confession, in literature, an autobiography, either real or fictitious, in which intimate and hidden details of the subject’s life are revealed. The first outstanding example of the genre was the Confessions of St. Augustine (c. 400 ce), a painstaking examination of Augustine’s progress from juvenile sinfulness and youthful debauchery to conversion to Christianity and the triumph of the spirit over the flesh. Others include Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822), by English essayist and critic...