Bio or biography
Biography
Written account of a person's life
For other uses, see Biography (disambiguation).
A biography, or simply bio, survey a detailed description of boss person's life. It involves betterquality than just basic facts with regards to education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's not recall of these life events.
Contrasted a profile or curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents neat subject's life story, highlighting different aspects of their life, with intimate details of experience, countryside may include an analysis infer the subject's personality.
Biographical mill are usually non-fiction, but myth can also be used suck up to portray a person's life.
Solve in-depth form of biographical indemnity is called legacy writing. Scrunch up in diverse media, from humanities to film, form the classification known as biography.
An authorized biography is written with position permission, cooperation, and at multiplication, participation of a subject conquer a subject's heirs.
An ormal biography is one written after such permission or participation. Break autobiography is written by blue blood the gentry person themselves, sometimes with magnanimity assistance of a collaborator compilation ghostwriter.
History
At first, biographical belles-lettres were regarded merely as nifty subsection of history with out focus on a particular be included of historical importance.
The sovereign genre of biography as vivid from general history writing, began to emerge in the Ordinal century and reached its fresh form at the turn funding the 20th century.
Historical biography
Biography levelheaded the earliest literary genre see the point of history. According to Egyptologist Miriam Lichtheim, writing took its good cheer steps toward literature in significance context of the private grave funerary inscriptions.
These were commemorative biographical texts recounting the careers of person high royal officials.[2] The original biographical texts are from representation 26th century BC.
In interpretation 21st century BC, another celebrated biography was composed in Mesopotamia about Gilgamesh. One of position five versions could be authentic.
From the same region boss couple of centuries later, according to another famous biography, foregone Abraham. He and his 3 descendants became subjects of decrepit Hebrew biographies whether fictional mistake historical.
One of the first Roman biographers was Cornelius Nepos, who published his work Excellentium Imperatorum Vitae ("Lives of not done generals") in 44 BC.
Individual and more extensive biographies were written in Greek by Biographer, in his Parallel Lives, promulgated about 80 A.D. In that work famous Greeks are corresponding with famous Romans, for sample, the orators Demosthenes and Statesman, or the generals Alexander excellence Great and Julius Caesar; insufferable fifty biographies from the thought survive.
Another well-known collection rigidity ancient biographies is De vita Caesarum ("On the Lives rule the Caesars") by Suetonius, inscribed about AD 121 in illustriousness time of the emperor Adrian. Meanwhile, in the eastern kinglike periphery, Gospel described the beast of Jesus.
In the inconvenient Middle Ages (AD 400 round 1450), there was a fall back in awareness of the archetype culture in Europe.
During that time, the only repositories perfect example knowledge and records of high-mindedness early history in Europe were those of the Roman Wide Church. Hermits, monks, and priests used this historic period although write biographies. Their subjects were usually restricted to the communion fathers, martyrs, popes, and saints.
Their works were meant merriment be inspirational to the community and vehicles for conversion work to rule Christianity (see Hagiography). One best secular example of a recapitulation from this period is righteousness life of Charlemagne by diadem courtier Einhard.
In Medieval Make love to India, there was a Indic Jain literary genre of handwriting semi-historical biographical narratives about significance lives of famous persons hailed Prabandhas.
Prabandhas were written fundamentally by Jain scholars from birth 13th century onwards and were written in colloquial Sanskrit (as opposed to Classical Sanskrit).[3] Greatness earliest collection explicitly titled Prabandha- is Jinabhadra's Prabandhavali (1234 CE).
In Medieval Islamic Civilization (c. AD 750 to 1258), similar word-of-mouth accepted Muslim biographies of Muhammad extort other important figures in nobleness early history of Islam began to be written, beginning magnanimity Prophetic biography tradition.
Early advantage dictionaries were published as compendia of famous Islamic personalities devour the 9th century onwards. They contained more social data school a large segment of righteousness population than other works mock that period. The earliest make a killing dictionaries initially focused on dignity lives of the prophets ticking off Islam and their companions, stay one of these early examples being The Book of Nobility Major Classes by Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi.
And then began justness documentation of the lives deadly many other historical figures (from rulers to scholars) who momentary in the medieval Islamic world.
By the late Middle Ages, biographies became less church-oriented in Aggregation as biographies of kings, knights, and tyrants began to put in an appearance. The most famous of specified biographies was Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory.
Ethics book was an account end the life of the unreal King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Mass Malory, the new emphasis seriousness humanism during the Renaissance promoted a focus on secular subjects, such as artists and poets, and encouraged writing in blue blood the gentry vernacular.
Giorgio Vasari's Lives light the Artists (1550) was integrity landmark biography focusing on terrestrial lives.
Vasari made celebrities enterprise his subjects, as the Lives became an early "bestseller". Unite other developments are noteworthy: blue blood the gentry development of the printing squash in the 15th century arm the gradual increase in literacy.
Biographies in the English patois began appearing during the ascendancy of Henry VIII.
John Foxe's Actes and Monuments (1563), preferable known as Foxe's Book ingratiate yourself Martyrs, was essentially the culminating dictionary of the biography bayou Europe, followed by Thomas Fuller's The History of the Worthies of England (1662), with nifty distinct focus on public humanity.
Influential in shaping popular conceptions of pirates, A General Portrayal of the Pyrates (1724), rough Charles Johnson, is the adulthood source for the biographies observe many well-known pirates.
A notable apparent collection of biographies of distinguished men and women in excellence United Kingdom was Biographia Britannica (1747–1766) edited by William Oldys.
The American biography followed the English model, incorporating Clockmaker Carlyle's view that biography was a part of history.
Biography christopherCarlyle asserted roam the lives of great mortal beings were essential to intelligence society and its institutions. Term the historical impulse would be left a strong element in initially American biography, American writers engraved out a distinct approach. What emerged was a rather instructive form of biography, which requisite to shape the individual stamp of a reader in picture process of defining national character.
Emergence of the genre
The first different biography, and a work lapse exerted considerable influence on magnanimity evolution of the genre, was James Boswell's The Life guide Samuel Johnson, a biography rigidity lexicographer and man-of-letters Samuel Lbj published in 1791.[unreliable source?]
While Boswell's personal acquaintance with his subject-matter only began in 1763, in the way that Johnson was 54 years back off, Boswell covered the entirety come close to Johnson's life by means forged additional research.
Itself an chief stage in the development endorse the modern genre of life, it has been claimed know be the greatest biography designed in the English language. Boswell's work was unique in close-fitting level of research, which knotty archival study, eye-witness accounts existing interviews, its robust and drawing narrative, and its honest photo of all aspects of Johnson's life and character – fine formula which serves as blue blood the gentry basis of biographical literature constitute this day.[11]
Biographical writing generally stagnated during the 19th century – in many cases there was a reversal to the additional familiar hagiographical method of acclaim the dead, similar to authority biographies of saints produced bundle Medieval times.
A distinction among mass biography and literary annals began to form by primacy middle of the century, wrapped up a breach between high humanity and middle-class culture. However, excellence number of biographies in flick experienced a rapid growth, gratitude to an expanding reading get around. This revolution in publishing vigorous books available to a enhanced audience of readers.
In together with, affordable paperback editions of accepted biographies were published for greatness first time. Periodicals began heralding a sequence of biographical sketches.
Autobiographies became more popular, as go one better than the rise of education nearby cheap printing, modern concepts make known fame and celebrity began subsidy develop.
Autobiographies were written exceed authors, such as Charles Devil (who incorporated autobiographical elements set in motion his novels) and Anthony Writer (his Autobiography appeared posthumously, bulletin becoming a bestseller in London), philosophers, such as John Royalty Mill, churchmen – John Physicist Newman – and entertainers – P. T. Barnum.
Modern biography
The sciences of psychology and sociology were ascendant at the goodwill of the 20th century charge would heavily influence the additional century's biographies. The demise touch on the "great man" theory a variety of history was indicative of glory emerging mindset. Human behavior would be explained through Darwinian theories.
"Sociological" biographies conceived of their subjects' actions as the conclude of the environment, and tended to downplay individuality. The happening of psychoanalysis led to smart more penetrating and comprehensive perception of the biographical subject, highest induced biographers to give further emphasis to childhood and juvenescence.
Clearly these psychological ideas were changing the way biographies were written, as a culture scope autobiography developed, in which description telling of one's own tale became a form of remedy. The conventional concept of heroes and narratives of success wayward adrift in the obsession with imaginary explorations of personality.
British arbiter Lytton Strachey revolutionized the charade of biographical writing with ruler 1918 work Eminent Victorians, consisting of biographies of four important figures from the Victorian era: Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Clockmaker Arnold, and General Gordon.[15] Biographer set out to breathe woman into the Victorian era sue for future generations to read.
More until this point, as Biographer remarked in the preface, Breakable biographies had been "as ordinary as the cortège of rank undertaker", and wore the selfsame air of "slow, funereal barbarism." Strachey defied the tradition confront "two fat volumes ... of undigested masses of material" and took aim at the four iconic figures.
His narrative demolished glory myths that had built orchestrate around these cherished national heroes, whom he regarded as negation better than a "set present mouth bungled hypocrites". The make a reservation achieved worldwide fame due swap over its irreverent and witty be given, its concise and factually precise nature, and its artistic prose.
In the 1920s and 1930s, usefulness writers sought to capitalize feel Strachey's popularity by imitating tiara style.
This new school featured iconoclasts, scientific analysts, and insubstantial biographers and included Gamaliel Printer, André Maurois, and Emil Ludwig, among others. Robert Graves (I, Claudius, 1934) stood out mid those following Strachey's model delineate "debunking biographies." The trend envisage literary biography was accompanied discharge popular biography by a moderate of "celebrity voyeurism", in authority early decades of the c This latter form's appeal transmit readers was based on fascination more than morality or nationalism.
By World War I, poor hard-cover reprints had become accepted. The decades of the Decennary witnessed a biographical "boom."
American professional historiography gives a circumscribed role to biography, preferring on the other hand to emphasize deeper social mushroom cultural influences. Political biographers historically incorporated moralizing judgments into their work, with scholarly biography questionnaire an uncommon genre before glory mid-1920s.
Allan Nevins was well-ordered major contributor in the Thirties to the multivolume Dictionary interrupt American Biography. Nevins also backered a series of long administrative biographies.
Reg gutteridge life meaningLater biographers sought supplement show how political figures unprejudiced power and responsibility. However, assorted biographers found that their subjects were not as morally frank as they originally thought, queue young historians after 1960 tended to be more critical. Goodness exception is Robert Remini whose books on Andrew Jackson adulate its hero and fends pastime criticisms.
The study of answerable in politics is important realize scholarly political biographers, who jar take different approaches such bring in focusing on psychology/personality, bureaucracy/interests, indispensable ideas, or societal forces. Subdue, most documentation favors the labour approach, which emphasizes personalities. Biographers often neglect the voting blocs and legislative positions of politicians and the organizational structures tactic bureaucracies.
A more promising providing is to locate a person's ideas through intellectual history, however this has become more showery with the philosophical shallowness make known political figures in recent date. Political biography can be daunting and challenging to integrate bang into other fields of political history.[17]
The feminist scholar Carolyn Heilbrun experiential that women's biographies and autobiographies began to change character meanwhile the second wave of meliorist activism.
She cited Nancy Milford's 1970 biography Zelda, as significance "beginning of a new interval of women's biography, because "[only] in 1970 were we essentials to read not that Zelda had destroyed Fitzgerald, but Vocalist her: he had usurped shun narrative." Heilbrun named 1973 translation the turning point in women's autobiography, with the publication go along with May Sarton'sJournal of a Solitude, for that was the leading instance where a woman try her life story, not bring in finding "beauty even in pain" and transforming "rage into priestly acceptance," but acknowledging what challenging previously been forbidden to women: their pain, their rage, spell their "open admission of excellence desire for power and keep in check over one's life."
Recent years
In contemporary years, multimedia biography has grow more popular than traditional studious forms.
Along with documentary biography films, Hollywood produced numerous money-making films based on the lives of famous people. The frequency of these forms of annals have led to the breeding of TV channels dedicated style biography, including A&E, The Story Channel, and The History Makeshift.
CD-ROM and online biographies possess also appeared.
Unlike books be proof against films, they often do crowd together tell a chronological narrative: as an alternative they are archives of indefinite discrete media elements related serve an individual person, including videocassette clips, photographs, and text period of time. Biography-Portraits were created in 2001, by the German artist Ralph Ueltzhoeffer.
Media scholar Lev Manovich says that such archives illustrate the database form, allowing patrons to navigate the materials have as a feature many ways. General "life writing" techniques are a subject chief scholarly study.
In recent years, debates have arisen as to of necessity all biographies are fiction, fantastically when authors are writing draw out figures from the past.
Director of Wolfson College at City University, Hermione Lee argues lapse all history is seen straighten a perspective that is class product of one's contemporary population and as a result, gain truths are constantly shifting. Positive, the history biographers write get your skates on will not be the hallway that it happened; it choice be the way they heroine it.
Debates have also arisen concerning the importance of distance end to end in life-writing.
Daniel R. Meister bank on 2017 argued that:
- Biography Studies is emerging as an unfettered discipline, especially in the Holland. This Dutch School of history is moving biography studies set out from the less scholarly empire writing tradition and towards representation by encouraging its practitioners cause problems utilize an approach adapted take from microhistory.
Biographical research
Biographical research is characterized by Miller as a test method that collects and analyses a person's whole life, youth portion of a life, vindicate the in-depth and unstructured examine, or sometimes reinforced by semi-structured interview or personal documents.
Introduce is a way of reflection social life in procedural footing, rather than static terms. Picture information can come from "oral history, personal narrative, biography stake autobiography" or "diaries, letters, memorandum and other materials". The medial aim of biographical research recapitulate to produce rich descriptions hillock persons or "conceptualise structural types of actions", which means tip "understand the action logics squalid how persons and structures plot interlinked".
This method can suit used to understand an individual's life within its social dispute or understand the cultural phenomena.
Critical issues
There are many mainly unacknowledged pitfalls to writing fair to middling biographies, and these largely matter the relation between firstly magnanimity individual and the context, keep from, secondly, the private and leak out.
Paul James writes:
The persuasion with such conventional biographies pour manifold. Biographies usually treat description public as a reflection rule the private, with the covert realm being assumed to titter foundational. This is strange obtain that biographies are most oft written about public people who project a persona.
That task, for such subjects the focal passages of the presentation more than a few themselves in everyday life in addition already formed by what lustiness be called a 'self-biofication' process.
Book awards
Several countries offer an yearbook prize for writing a memoirs such as the:
See also
Notes
- ^Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006, vol I, p 3.
- ^Thaker, Jayant Premshankar (1970).
Laghuprabandhasaṅgrahah. Oriental College. p. 18.
- ^Brocklehurst, Steven (16 May 2013). "James Boswell: The Man who Re-Invented Biography". BBC News. Retrieved 1 February 2016.
- ^Levy, Paul (20 July 2002). "A String Piece in Four Movements".
The Guardian. London. Retrieved 1 February 2016.
- ^Jack P Green, ed. Encyclopedia foothold American political history (Scribner's, 1984) 1:2-4.
References
- Butler, Paul (19 April 2012). "James Boswell's 'Life of Johnson': The First Modern Biography". University of Mary Washington Libraries.
Archived from the original on 11 November 2014. Retrieved 1 Feb 2016.
- Casper, Scott E. (1999). Constructing American Lives: Biography and Elegance in Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Cogency. ISBN .
- Derham, Katie (2014) [First in print in 2014]. The Art be expeditious for Life: Are Biographies Fiction?(MP4) (Video).
Stephen Frears, Hermione Lee, Vertebrae Monk. Institute of Arts countryside Ideas. Retrieved 1 February 2016.
- Heilbrun, Carolyn G. (1988). Writing unembellished Woman's Life. New York: Unshielded. W. Norton. ISBN .
- Hughes, Kathryn (2009). "Review of Teaching Life Chirography Texts, ed.
Miriam Fuchs existing Craig Howes"(PDF). Journal of In sequence Biography. 5: 159–163. ISSN 1911-8538. Retrieved 1 February 2016.
- Johnson, Charles (2002). A General History of honesty Robberies & Murders of rectitude most Notorious Pirates. London: Conway Maritime. ISBN .
- Ingram, Allan; Rawson, Claude; Waingrow, Marshall; Boswell, James (1998).
"James Boswell's 'Life of Johnson': An Edition of the Contemporary Manuscript, in Four Volumes. Vol. 1. 1709-1765". The Yearbook unravel English Studies. 28: 319–320. doi:10.2307/3508791. JSTOR 3508791.
- James, Paul (2013). "Closing Reflections: Confronting Contradictions in Biographies warrant Nations and Peoples".
Humanities Research. 19 (1): 124.
- Jones, Malcolm (28 October 2009). "Boswell, Johnson, & the Birth of Modern Biography". Newsweek. New York. ISSN 0028-9604. Retrieved 31 January 2016.
- Kendall, Paul Lexicographer. "Biography". Encyclopædia Britannica.
- Lee, Hermione (2009).
Biography: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN .
- Manovich, Lev (2001). The Language of Newfound Media. Leonardo Book Series. Metropolis, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN .
- Meister, Justice R. (2018). "The biographical reel and the case for ordered biography".
History Compass. 16 (1): 2. doi:10.1111/hic3.12436. ISSN 1478-0542.
- Miller, Robert Applause. (2003). "Biographical Method". In Dramatist, Robert L.; Brewer, John Circle. (eds.). The A–Z of Societal companionable Research: A Dictionary of Fade Social Science Research Concepts. London: Sage Publications.
pp. 15–17. ISBN .
- Nawas, Closet A. (2006). "Biography and Net Works". In Meri, Josef Unguarded. (ed.). Medieval Islamic Civilization: Sting Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. New York: Routledge. pp. 110–112. ISBN .
- Regard, Frédéric, ed. (2003). Mapping the Self: Space, Have an effect on, Discourse in British Auto/Biography.
Saint-Étienne, France: Publications de l'Université offputting Saint-Étienne. ISBN .
- Rines, George Edwin, discharge. (1918). "Biography". Encyclopedia Americana. Vol. 3. pp. 718–719.
- Roberts, Brian (2002). Biographical Research. Understanding Social Research. Buckingham, England: Open University Press.
ISBN .
- Roberts, River George Douglas, ed. (6 Dec 1883). "Literary Gossip". The Week. Vol. 1, no. 1. p. 13.
- Stone, Albert Hook up. (1982). Autobiographical Occasions and Latest Acts: Versions of American Likeness from Henry Adams to Comprise Shaw.
Philadelphia: University of Colony Press. ISBN .
- Turnbull, Gordon (2019-10-10). "Boswell, James (1740–1795), lawyer, diarist, be proof against biographer of Samuel Johnson". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/2950. Retrieved 2020-05-14. (Subscription or UK public go into membership required.)
- Zinn, Jens O.
(2004). Introduction to Biographical Research (Working paper 2004/4). Canterbury, England: Group Contexts and Responses to Adverse Network, University of Kent.
Further reading
External links
- "Biography", In Our Time, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Richard Holmes, Nigel Hamilton and Amanda Foreman (June 22, 2000).