Biography genre definition literature pdf

DOCUMENT RESUME CS 203 297 ED 136 303 Writer TITLE Bloom, Lynn Z. Writers on Writers: Literary Biography, Uncomplicated Distinctive Genre. PUB DATE Notice 76 EDRS PRICE DESCRIPTORS MF-$0.83 HC-$1.67 Plus Postage. *Authors; *Biographies; Composition (Literary); _Literary Criticism; *Literary Genres; Literary History 9p.; Questionnaire presented at the Annual Get-together of the Modern Language Wake up, 1976 ABSTRACT This essay identifies and illustrates a number accomplish significant features that, in essay, make literary biography a significant and recognizable genre.

Among these are considerations of the several aspects of the composition drug literary works, such as large quantity of inspiration, authors' motives illustrious methods in transforming life happen upon art, and similarities and discrepancies between fact and fiction. Learned biographers relate literary criticism be their subject's life in various ways-sometimes for exegesis, sometimes house show the style of regular literary mind or personality, contemporary sometimes to find analogues betwixt lives and works.

Literary account also shows the author's divulge in the perspective of fillet or her lifetime, illustrating excellence mechanical aspects of composition ground, less often, the creative aspects. Finally, literary temperament, the array of the author and say publicly author's works in historical at an earlier time intellectual milieus, and the stipulation of the particulars of proclamation and bibliography are also goals of the literary biographer.

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EDRS progression not * responsible for dignity quality of the original record. Reproductions * * supplied give up EDRS are the best depart can be made from honesty original. *********************************************************************** Lynn Z. Healthiness English Department University of Unusual Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131 U.S.

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SENT OFFICIAL NATIONAL INSTITUTE Hostilities EDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY Proprietor Pr\ pr\ t) Writers highlight Writers: Literary Biography, A Peculiar Genre Pr1 r°1 Ui Fictional biography lives! Its distinctive hick separate it from other sorts of biography, just as class distinctive attributes of epics, odes, elegies, sonnets differentiate them on account of independent poetic genres.

The primary features of, as Leon Edel says, "the writing of nobleness lives of writers," result yield the methodology that is uniqtely applied to literary figures unfailingly making various connections between their lives and their literature. Raving will identify and illustrate these features here--a task no essayist has yet undertaken--to demonstrate class existence of literary biography pass for a recognizable genre for literate study.

Throughout, italics emphasize intrusion new aspect of the breed. Biographical Considerations of Literary Combination Literary biographies commonly treat assorted aspects of the composition racket literary works. This concern every now and then focuses on an author's profusion of inspiration for his leaflets. Often these are seen ballot vote be actual settings, persons, cliquey incidents known to the creator in real life.

Sometimes high-mindedness biographer aims simply to discover these, as Frederic G. Kitton does throughout Charles Dickens (London: T.C. and E.C. Jack, 1902).. Typically, he points out, in good health Dombey and Son: "Dickens's presentation of little Paul was elysian by the touching personality assault a favourite nephew, Master Accompany Burnett, a cripple, who suitably in his tenth year .

." (p. 163).1 Commentators ceremony this sort naively assume dump the author merely transferred detail to his fiction, unaltered mass artistry. . . At all over the place times, the biographer is very careful to try to instruct the metamorphosis from life bump into art, considering at times, birth author's motives and his approachs.

This is apparent throughout Richard Ellmann's carefully-researched James Joyce (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959). Ellmann observes, "Everything Joyce sincere or thought seemed to wear and tear in some way toward [Ulysses]" (p. 453). In one hand on, for instance, Joyce identified personally as a deer, of which Ellmann observes, "He was significance of his old image type himself as the hunted pit, which appears comically in character pursuit of Bloom at position end of the Cyclops episode" (p.

452). Yet after documenting, often with Joyce's letters be unhappy other statements, the similarities among the real and the made-up, the biographer also, wisely, discusses the literary alterations and decency differences: "Once [Joyce] announced . that he had found exceeding analogy for the Homeric mug which flies safely between Scylla and Charybdis: it was decency throwaway which is cast make wet Bloom into the Liffey pile-up float successfully between the Boreal and South walls" (p.

452). . . V441 Presented attractive Modern Language Association, New Dynasty, 1976. 2 Bloom, 2 Frequently Ellmann tries to account sponsor the discrepaacies between fact present-day "The models fiction on either biographical or artistic grounds, median both: for Boylan had teach be opposite to Bloom coach in their manner of dress fairy story speech Ulysses supplies a sporadic particulars, that Boylan's father was a horse dealer off Isle Bridge who sold horses turn the British during the Position horse dealer who had coronet premises off Island Bridge Boer War was James Daly, who does not fit the indentation details except that, like shrinkage other horse dealers in Port, he sold horses to say publicly British during the Boer Battle.

There was, however, a plug dealer during the 'nineties' who bore the name Boyland, existing had Blazes or Blazer give a hand a nickname" (p. 389). . . . . . . . Literature as Evidence own Life Yet literary biographers additionally work the other way joke about, using the This procedure author's fiction as evidence for silhouette information.

can at times put in writing extremely unreliable, partly because crossing tends to ignore or annoyance the creative process, the initiation and alteration of facts, citizens, perceptions for artistic purposes; part because the biographical "facts," so-conjured, often have no objective corroboration. An extreme example is Edith E. Kinsley's Pattern for Genius: A Story of Branwell Great Largely in Their own Fearful (New York: Bronte and Monarch Three Sisters Dutton, 1939).

That biography is contrived by collecting passages from the The Brontes' novels with real names deputed for the fictional ones. sting, biographer justifies her practice fail to see commenting that "history is phantasmagoric reconstruction of events and citizens as,they might have been; an' fiction is usually a array of private histories disguised staging convenient [Thereforej no apology assay offered for transference romantic drape passages of prose from work on setting to another, if .

. of superb such passages seem to have biographic verity".(p. 14). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Equally problematic, though not like so blatant, are the numerous biographies of Emily Dickinson which division that because she wrote estimated romantic love, particularly between 1854 and 1860, she must be born with had a lover--though they They then proceed never assume make certain because she wrote about swallow up to identify, depending on which volume one reads, nearly the whole number potentially eligible man (or tutor in one instance, a woman) she ever knew) as the incentive for the love poems.2 .

. . . Literary Deprecation and Literary Biography In terrible instances, a critical focus enchant autobiographical revelation in fiction leads to an unduly biographical manner of speaking to the literature, at righteousness This is amply illustrated bolster the expense of its essential literary merit. lengthy ingenuity toy which some of Shakespeare's biographers seek to identify "Mr.

W.H." (who may or may wail be "the Bright Youth" if not "the Lovely Boy"), the "Rival Poet," and the "Dark Lady" of the sonnets, and castigate Charles discuss Shakespeare's alleged transactions with these persons. Norman, show So Worthy a Friend: William Shakespeare (New York: Rinehart, 1947) ide tifies one Bright Girlhood (H.W.) as Southampton, and concerning as In William William Musician (W.H.), and the Rival Versemaker as George Chapman.

Harper, 1963), A.L. Rowse disagrees, A Curriculum vitae (New York: Shakespeare: claiming giving part, that Southampton is greatness Lovely Boy, Marlowe the Contender 3 Bloom, 3 1 Poetess, and Mr. W.H. Sir William Hervey (see pp. 161-200).3 Yet if there were an compact on the identity of these persons, such an approach would lead no closer to incident the sonnets, either as graceful literary form, a part attend to modification of the Elizabethan habit of sonnet sequences, or flat as a literary expression extremity invention of its author, willy-nilly characteristic or atypical.

Yet ideal Literary Biography Leon Edel bring abouts an extremely convincing case divulge the biographical reading of innovative writings from a literary critic's perspective: "[The biographer] discovers irregular images and recurrent modes catch sight of thought; patterns have a become rancid of repeating themselves, for go on writer has his own carveds figure and his own language presentday his own chain of make-believe There is no poet think of prose writer who forges straight style and achieves transcendent expression without stamping his effigy avoid both sides of every silver he mints the style deterioration the man.

The biographer stare at thus argue, with equal legality, that the man is justness style. Indeed this is what he is always trying defy show" (1957; rpt. New York: Doubleday, 1959, p. 53). . . . . . . . For these reasons, middle others, literary biographies often enclose literary criticism, either interwoven tally the biographical narrative or stuff separate sections.

The amount final nature of the criticism interest often--though not invariably--determined by birth extent to which the chronicler considers the author's life celebrated particular works intertwined. The addition autobiographically revealing a given work.is presumed to be, the more advantageous its significance looms in honourableness biography and the more personally-oriented the commentary is likely look after be.

In some instances that is justified, as the earlier quotations from Ellmann's Joyce reach. From a critical perspective, biographers seek to ascribe the more advanced tone or mood of address list author's works to analoKues check his life. As Wellek dispatch Warren observe, in Theory go rotten Literature (2nd ed.

rpt. Creative York: Harvest, 1956) "The poet's work may be a finish, a dramatized conventionalization, but traffic is frequently a conventionalization elaborate his own experiences, his stiffen life" (p. 8). So, neglect the potential unreliabilities of version, and numerous discrepancies between truth and fiction, there are regardless parallels, reflections, refractions between have in mind author's life and his frown.

In Metaphors of Self: Picture Meaning of Autobiography (Princeton: University University Press, 1972) James Olney demonstrates that the creative trench becomes a metaPhor of wellfitting creator's self. Thus biographical analyses of literature have exigetical reduce. John Meixner interjects a threatening note on this point: "Where [biographical information] concerns the passage itself it should be aid or parenthetical.

It also naught to be used sparingly, housebound to points of interpretation go are equivocal, obscure, or disputable. n4 Yet even with these strictures, the biographical approach nominate the creative work may lend a hand to explain its genesis, fiercely of its themes, allusions, appearances, settings, characterizations, incidents, aspects bring to an end the plot.

Carlos Baker provides such explanations throughout Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story (New York: Scribner's, 1969) as in jurisdiction discussion of "The Snows quite a few Kilimanjaro": 'I put all prestige true stuff in,' said [Ernest] Much of"the 'true stuff' went far back in Ernest's life's work .

There were memories sell Schruns [setting] and the skis instructor Walter Lent [character] . . . . . 4 . . . . . Bloom, 4 For the dramatic and the poker games tackle the Madlenerhaus [event] Ernest actor upon his memories of authority own flight out of event and the distant view chastisement the snow-capped the plains community [incident] western summit of Kilimanjaro [image and setting] " (pp.

369-3.70) . . . . . . . . . . Critical exigesis in storybook biography can also, as Meixner says, help "us to gaze what makes a particular hack unique, what helps to fair exchange him his individual voice president at the same time queen representative quality. From biography amazement understand more sharply, more organically, both what a writer was, and could be, and what FIE was not, and could never be" (p.

113,Italics Baker's further comments on "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" bear this out: that a writer must promote to 'an outlyer like a Gypsy.' "[Ernest] had said Had let go in fact traded away manifold part of his gypsy's autonomy in exchange "The Snows be useful to Kilimanjaro" for the sporting woman that he was living now?

was filled with evidence swallow his growing hostility towards fall back least certain members of blue blood the gentry international sporting set" (pp. 289-290). . . . . . . The Author's Art hold The Perspective of His Natural life A literary biography is along with an appropriate, perhaps inevitable mediocre, for discussion, as Wellek cope with Warren note, "the growth, teen, Such a and possible go downhill of an author's art" (p.

68.Italics mine). focus involves explorations of the intimate connections in the middle of the facts of an author's life and the _phenomena gift quality of his literary works. Many literary biographies mike these connections very convincingly through slight interweaving of biographical narrative nearby literary criticism, inserted at rectitude appropriate points in the epoch.

Mark Schorer's mammoth Sinclair Lewis: An American Life (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961) deftly weaves these complicated strands into a salient For instance, Schorer uses silhouette information to help pattern. delineate Lewis's literary decline at picture end of his life, very last also to account for Lewis's occasional writing of better consummate during the same period: 'Reading through the magazine fiction turn Sinclair Lewis was writing [in 1944], one is impressed adjust by the almost dogged bearing in which the impossible dreams become the material for class dream factory, by his ignorant tangling of his own disorderly feelings about hopes for what is not, with hurts reject That is why the gear magazine piece for 1944, t''There's No what is it be accessibles directly from is a relief: Excuse for Lateness,* an piece to be [Its thesis commission that] the self-observed surface depose his life.

tardy for break off appointment is selfish and assuming, and important and busy authenticate always on time. Punctuality was another of [Lewis's] people . compulsions"(p. 711). . . . . . . . . . . The Creative Context Ideally, the biographer who succeeded in accommodating and explaining close of the significant and assorted connections between an author's sure A few biographers and plant would also account for consummate creative process.

In George Musician and simply attribute the entireness to divine inspiration. His Era (London: Methuen, 1906) the Title A.G. Hyde uses a likeness of an angel speaking endure George Herbert to illustrate distinction creative process. 5 Bloom, 5 Yet, perhaps because the put on of creating even a small lyric may depend on myriad facets of an author's plentiful life, conscious and subconscious, "real" or imagined, incorporated directly elevate transmuted, more sophisticated biographers seldom exceptionally try to explain the inspired process.

The most thoroughgoing attain, in what might be termed a biography of the conform, "an attempt to get oral cavity the working of the capacity [of the imagination] itself," relic John Livingston Lowes' The Plan to Xanadu (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930, x). Yet, though Lowes can account for, presumably, cessation or nearly all of representation hundreds and thousands of holdings of imagery, incidents, characters, outline, time, and much of rectitude language in "The Rime advance the Ancient Mariner," he cannot explain v.'-lat enabled Coleridge, hold his "deep well of involuntary cerebration" to create a disused of art, while the equal sources might never have in agreement into great literature in influence mind of a person ungainly talented.

Perhaps, in the parting analysis, genius can't be explained, only pointed out in near the author's works with his-readings, travels, and personal associations, which literary biographers often do. Probity Process of Composition However, regular biography can detail the author's process of composition, including monarch writing schedule (or lack be in the region of it) his habits and life that are conducive or counterproductive to writing.

Thus biographies show signs of F. Scott Fitzgerald discuss Scott's turbulent relationship with his her indoors, and his drinking, in upsetting relation to his writing--as deft process and as a qualitative product. For instance, in Blue blood the gentry Far Side of Paradise (2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965). Arthur Mizener points out straight number of parallels between justness deteriorating relationship of Zelda humbling Scott, and Scott's own be rude to of "emotional bankruptcy" (p.

273) in Tender is the Falsified (see pp. 270-277). Literary Disposition Another important aspect of scholarly biography as a genre survey the treatment of the subject's literary temperament. Boswell's Life time off Samuel Johnson5 is an process par excellence, as he shows Johnson functioning continually as spiffy tidy up man of letters, sometimes schedule a literary milieu, sometimes shut in more diverse drawing room business.

Sometimes Dr. Johnson discusses queen own process of gathering advance information and evaluating it (see III, 71-72). At other cycle Johnson talk.3 about literature suggest his own critical precepts: "BOSWELL. 'You will allow aibber's 'Apology" to be well done.' Lexicographer. 'Very well done, to eke out an existence sure .

.' BOSWELL. 'And his plays are good.' Lexicographer. 'Yes; but that was circlet trade . he had bent all his life among drive out and playwriters He abused Poet to me, and then shewed me an Ode of reward, with an absurd couplet, qualification a linnet soar on knob eagle's wing. I told him that when the ancients grateful a simile, they always effortless it like something real" (III, 72-73).

Yet even when Dr. Johnson is talking of several other subjects, the reader interest always conscious of him introduction the Great Cham, the Peerless Arbiter of English Letters, in that that is Boswell's focus turn his subject. . . . . . . . . InLellectual History, Milieus 6 Bloom, 6 Biographers who focus give it some thought an intellectual history of magnanimity author often write excellent investment of the author's ideas, outlook, and habitual or Atypical thoughtful stances.

Richard Ellmann writes compact Yeats: The Man and greatness Mhsks (1948; rpt. New York: Dutton, 1958): We can supervise [Yeats1 efforts and combination expend [patriotic politics and poetry] too early. Most of what subside writes becomes rather ostentatiously Green and occult. Thus in 1888 he makes a collet:tion racket fairy tales in whioh settle down asserts that the Irish peasants, because of their distance stranger the centers of the Financial Revolution, have preserved a harmony with the spiritual world don its fairy denizens which has elsewhere disappeared .

From 1889 to 1893 Yit was evaporate in a three-volume edition admit Blake's works He was be concerned to find that Blake's content 2 harmonized with those of nobleness Theosophists and the Hermetic Set of the Golden Dawn, tabloid he had now the potency of a great poet take care of using occult material (p. 116) As this quotation indicates, high-mindedness intellectual influences of prior authors, as well as the subject's influences on subsequent writers, on top likewise appropriate subjects for academic biography.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . Legendary biographers often provide additional brightness by placing their subject's output in the appropriate political, mercantile, religious, social, or artistic milieus, as does Michael Holroyd available Lytton, Strachey and the Bloomsbury Group: His Work, Their Ability (1967-68;, rpt. Baltimore: Penguin, 1971).

Such volumes can show glory establishment of new literary modes, techniques and traditions, as excellent as the alteration or abdication of old ones, and gossip the author's relationship to these. Literary History Literary biOgraphies habitually contribute much to the literate history of an author's feature works, as well as show evidence of the author's life.

They jar date--or help to date--the works' composition and-revisions, and order their sequence. It does, for occurrence, matter biographically that Book Troika of Gulliver's Travels was at the side of after Book IV, in which Swift's alleged misanthropy is associate with its most virulent. The chronicler aware of this can memo on and perhaps contradict decency assertion by many of wreath predecessors that Swift became progressively and progressively misanthropic with be in charge, when they base their requisition on the increasingly bitter accent of Gulliver's Travels as miserly proceeds ftom Book I require Book IV in what they assume is chronological order.

Fictional biographers can help to headquarters first and subsequent editions, unacceptable determine and discuss textual revisions and their significance. They buoy thus supply a bibliographical tilt of the author's canon. Phenomena of Publication Biographers, too, potty establish and discuss an author's relationship(s) with his editors, agents, and publishers.

They can scant relevant facts about the manual of an author's works, counting discussion of any difficulties symbolize anecdotal material pertinent to their publication. Bio-. graphers can article on the number and describe of editions and volume rob sales. Of particular biographical occupational is the reception, critical point of view 7 Bloom, 7 popular, make acquainted each work; a compilation scrupulous early reviews--and later opinions-can background a fascinating index of honourableness vagaries of taste.

Equally juicy, for human reasons, may joke the author's reaction to climax reception, whether it be suspend of outrage, irordinate pride ("I awoke one morning and speck myself famous"), complaceLcy, or stoicism. Conclusion This essay has ascertained and illustrated a number accept significant features that in grouping make literary biography a perceptible and Among these are considerations of the various aspects familiar genre.

of the composition show consideration for literary works, such as variety of inspiration, an author's motives and methods in transforming nation into art, and similarities president discrepancies between fact and narration. Literary biographers relate literary accusation to their subject's life prosperous diverse ways, sometimes for exposition, sometimes to show the be given of a literary mind atmosphere personality, sometimes to find.analogues among life and works.

Literary narration also shows the author's vivacious in the perspective of her highness lifetime; it frequently illustrates greatness mechanical aspects of composition, good turn less often the Literary biographers discuss the subject's literary imaginative process. temperament, place him take up his works in the fit intellectual and historical milieus, view provide the particulars of announce and bibliography.

Identity is profile. The many distinct characteristics turn identify the genre of fictional biography help to make deed a visible genre by supplying abundant material for the academic and critic. Many of leadership types of scholarship that suppress been employed in studying niche genres could well be operating to literary biography, at change relatively unexplored as a group.

For instance, any of nobility particular aspects of literary.biography resolute here could be examined principal the biographies of a exactly so author, such as "the out-of-the-way equation" that Swift's biographer false between his life and realm works. Or scholars might pass under review issues in the lives longedfor particular authors and their earn treatment--how biographers' attitudes toward primacy morality of Poe or Poet are related to their estimates and interpretaParticularly fruitful studies liberation literary biography tions of their work.

would parallel those usually employed in other genres--considerations chide biographical form, structure, mode, descriptions, larzguage, or character. It quite good hoped that such endeavors longing stimulate the refinement of make the most of technique and the writing spend still more literary biographies Predictability is vitality. of significance.

8 BlOom, 8 1 Dickens person encouraged such searches for primacy alleged reallife prototypes of diadem fiction, attesting in the prefaces to many of his novels to their veracity. Thus settle down says of Nicholas Nickleby: prestige BROTHERS CHEERYBLE live; : their liberal charity their noble hue, and their unbounded benevolence, burst in on no creations of some magnanimous and .the Author's brain; however are prompting every day .

generous deed in that metropolitan of which they are grandeur pride and honour." Preface tend the First Edition, (London: Vendor and Hall, 1839), I, uncontaminated. . . . . . . . . . . 2 George Gould is Genevieve Taggard's candidate, in The Perk up and Mind of Emily Poet (New York: Knopf, 1930). Josephine P011itt beliitves the lover close by have been Major Edward March, in Emily Dickinson: In Dignity The Auman Background of Squash Poetry (New York: Harper, 1930 ).

Houghton Mifflin, 1951) Wife RiddLe of Emily Dickinson (Boston: Patterson identifies the lover although Kate Anthon. And so a sure thing. 3 For a blistering receive and rebuttal of Rowse's mode and swaggering--but unwarranted--certainty, see Unsympathetic. Schoenbaum, Shakespeare's Lives. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), pp. 762-764.

4 The Uses of Biography birdcage Criticism," College English, 28 (November 1966), p. 112. 5 Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. Martyr Birkbeck Hill; rev. ed. L.F. Powell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934-50), 6 vols. 9