282 KUEK, LING Autobiography and Ethical Literary Criticism FLORENCE KUEK LING TEK SOON KUEK, LING Abstract. Autobiographies are traditionally understood as means of self- redemption or self-validation of the respective autobiographers, but they seem to have become tools of self-assertion in the recent times. The writers of this paper noticed that the underlying patterns in major autobiographies of the respective centuries such as those of Augustine, Rousseau, Virginia Woolf, Han Suyin and other male or female autobiographers commonly evolve around one’s ethical choices in response to the vices caused by one’s natural will and when facing ethical dilemmas caused by life challenges. This paper examines the abovementioned autobiographies via the Ethical Literary Criticism (ELC). Developed by Professor Nie Zhenzhao since 2004, ELC is one of the most insightful critiques in expounding the relationship of the self with oneself, self with others, and self with the divine or higher moral order in the context of the literary world. Keywords: autobiography; Ethical Literary Criticism; ethical choice; rational will; natural will Introduction After a decade of the revival of ethical literary criticism (ELC) with its unique Chinese slant by Professor Nie Zhenzhao, the adherents of the critical method are gaining in number internationally. As Nie and his colleagues organize an annual conference where hundreds of ELC proponents around the world meet and sharpen their pens, criticism that employs ELC is starting appear in international journals. To name ELC has been featured in the China-based Foreign Literature Studies, the Germany-based Arcadia, and the Taiwanese Universitas: Monthly Review of Philosophy and Culture. The American-based Comparative Literature and Culture has confirmed publishing a special issue on ELC by end of 2015. Even The London-based Times Literary Supplement took notice of the method and practice of ELC in its July 2015 issue. This paper attempts to introduce and engage ELC in the reading of the autobiographies of reputable authors who marked the turns of new epochs in autobiographical writing, namely Augustine, Rousseau, Virginia Woolf and Han Suyin. INTERLITEARIA 2017, 22/2: 282–296 DOI: https://doi.org/10.12697/IL.2017.2.2.7