A study of personality in literary autobiography: An analysis of Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel..

Analyzed physical and psychological traits used by Thomas Wolfe to describe self and others in Look Homeward, Angel as a method for studying personality. Set-theoretical comparisons (HICLAS algorithm) of the traits he attributed to self during 5 successive age periods revealed that Wolfe viewed his development as the accumulation over time of core family traits, particularly those of father. Multidimensional scaling revealed sharp differences between trait content Wolfe attributed to self and family and trait content he attributed to nonfamily. Interpretable differences were also found between family and nonfamily in the proportion of unique traits attributed to a person. In addition, differences were found in the proportion of unique traits attributed to self during the 5 different age periods. Implications of the findings for personality are discussed. Look Homeward, Angel (LHA) is a fictionalized autobiogra-phy of Thomas Wolfe's life from his infancy to his early 20s. Most of the people and places described in the book are readily identifiable despite their fictional aliases. The elements selected from LHA for analysis are all the characteristics, physical and psychological, that Wolfe attributed to himself and to others in