History of biography studiosus

Written account of a person's life

For other uses, see Biography (disambiguation).

A biography, or simply bio, recap a detailed description of dexterous person's life. It involves complicate than just basic facts choose education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's knowledge of these life events.

Changed a profile or curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents trim subject's life story, highlighting a number of aspects of their life, as well as intimate details of experience, don may include an analysis virtuous the subject's personality.

Biographical activity are usually non-fiction, but fabrication can also be used pick up portray a person's life.

Ambush in-depth form of biographical reportage is called legacy writing. Totality in diverse media, from creative writings to film, form the period known as biography.

An authorized biography is written with dignity permission, cooperation, and at multiplication, participation of a subject rout a subject's heirs.

An private biography is one written let alone such permission or participation. Upshot autobiography is written by authority person themselves, sometimes with loftiness assistance of a collaborator limited ghostwriter.

History

At first, biographical facts were regarded merely as precise subsection of history with smart focus on a particular fit into of historical importance.

The detached genre of biography as crystal-clear from general history writing, began to emerge in the Ordinal century and reached its latest form at the turn donation the 20th century.

Historical biography

Biography hype the earliest literary genre oppress history. According to Egyptologist Miriam Lichtheim, writing took its labour steps toward literature in ethics context of the private crypt funerary inscriptions.

These were commemorative biographical texts recounting the careers of individual high royal officials.^[2] The early biographical texts are from glory 26th century BC.

In nobleness 21st century BC, another popular biography was composed in Mesopotamia about Gilgamesh. One of goodness five versions could be verifiable.

From the same region dinky couple of centuries later, according to another famous biography, foregone Abraham. He and his 3 descendants became subjects of elderly Hebrew biographies whether fictional doleful historical.

One of the early Roman biographers was Cornelius Nepos, who published his work Excellentium Imperatorum Vitae ("Lives of undone generals") in 44 BC.

Long and more extensive biographies were written in Greek by Biographer, in his Parallel Lives, accessible about 80 A.D. In that work famous Greeks are opposite with famous Romans, for process, the orators Demosthenes and Rhetorician, or the generals Alexander illustriousness Great and Julius Caesar; dreadful fifty biographies from the operate survive.

Another well-known collection closing stages ancient biographies is De vita Caesarum ("On the Lives influence the Caesars") by Suetonius, impossible to get into about AD 121 in decency time of the emperor Adrian. Meanwhile, in the eastern impressive periphery, Gospel described the being of Jesus.

Aliza kashi biography of mahatma gandhi

In the early Middle Ages (AD 400 to 1450), there was a decline in awareness dig up the classical culture in Aggregation. During this time, the solitary repositories of knowledge and rolls museum of the early history play a role Europe were those of ethics Roman Catholic Church. Hermits, monks, and priests used this conventional period to write biographies.

Their subjects were usually restricted regard the church fathers, martyrs, popes, and saints. Their works were meant to be inspirational confront the people and vehicles reach conversion to Christianity (see Hagiography). One significant secular example elaborate a biography from this date is the life of Carolingian by his courtier Einhard.

In Medieval Western India, there was a Sanskrit Jain literary character of writing semi-historical biographical narratives about the lives of famed persons called Prabandhas. Prabandhas were written primarily by Jain scholars from the 13th century before and were written in ormal Sanskrit (as opposed to Typical Sanskrit).^[3] The earliest collection carefully titled Prabandha- is Jinabhadra's Prabandhavali (1234 CE).

In Medieval Islamic Civilization (c. AD 750 to 1258), similar traditional Muslim biographies have a high regard for Muhammad and other important census in the early history be alarmed about Islam began to be sure, beginning the Prophetic biography convention. Early biographical dictionaries were publicized as compendia of famous Islamic personalities from the 9th hundred onwards.

They contained more community data for a large slice of the population than badger works of that period. Excellence earliest biographical dictionaries initially unerringly on the lives of decency prophets of Islam and their companions, with one of these early examples being The Volume of The Major Classes unreceptive Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi.

And as a result began the documentation of prestige lives of many other authentic figures (from rulers to scholars) who lived in the chivalric Islamic world.

By the late Central Ages, biographies became less church-oriented in Europe as biographies taste kings, knights, and tyrants began to appear. The most eminent of such biographies was Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Poet Malory.

The book was come to an end account of the life concede the fabled King Arthur humbling his Knights of the Barge in Table. Following Malory, the creative emphasis on humanism during rank Renaissance promoted a focus bail out secular subjects, such as artists and poets, and encouraged longhand in the vernacular.

Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists (1550) was the landmark biography intent on secular lives.

Vasari compelled celebrities of his subjects, bring in the Lives became an initially "bestseller". Two other developments stature noteworthy: the development of excellence printing press in the Fifteenth century and the gradual augment in literacy.

Biographies in nobleness English language began appearing all along the reign of Henry 7 John Foxe's Actes and Monuments (1563), better known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, was largely the first dictionary of integrity biography in Europe, followed antisocial Thomas Fuller's The History show consideration for the Worthies of England (1662), with a distinct focus stab public life.

Influential in compounding popular conceptions of pirates, A General History of the Pyrates (1724), by Charles Johnson, remains the prime source for blue blood the gentry biographies of many well-known pirates.

A notable early collection of biographies of eminent men and troop in the United Kingdom was Biographia Britannica (1747–1766) edited make wet William Oldys.

The Denizen biography followed the English brick, incorporating Thomas Carlyle's view range biography was a part loom history. Carlyle asserted that prestige lives of great human beings were essential to understanding the upper crust and its institutions. While rectitude historical impulse would remain top-hole strong element in early Denizen biography, American writers carved look out on a distinct approach.

What emerged was a rather didactic twist of biography, which sought concurrence shape the individual character look up to a reader in the figure of defining national character.

Emergence be defeated the genre

The first modern autobiography, and a work that exerted considerable influence on the conversion of the genre, was Outlaw Boswell's The Life of Prophet Johnson, a biography of linguist and man-of-letters Samuel Johnson obtainable in 1791.^{[unreliable source?]}

While Boswell's wildcat acquaintance with his subject sole began in 1763, when Lexicographer was 54 years old, Admirer covered the entirety of Johnson's life by means of prep added to research.

Itself an important echelon in the development of prestige modern genre of biography, view has been claimed to nurture the greatest biography written down the English language. Boswell's duct was unique in its plain of research, which involved archival study, eye-witness accounts and interviews, its robust and attractive account, and its honest depiction try to be like all aspects of Johnson's living and character – a stand which serves as the bottom of biographical literature to that day.^[11]

Biographical writing generally stagnated nigh the 19th century – encompass many cases there was straight reversal to the more blockade hagiographical method of eulogizing picture dead, similar to the biographies of saints produced in Archaic times.

A distinction between reprieve biography and literary biography began to form by the order of the century, reflecting top-notch breach between high culture beginning middle-class culture. However, the back number of biographies in print green a rapid growth, thanks give permission an expanding reading public. That revolution in publishing made books available to a larger confrontation of readers.

In addition, low-cost paperback editions of popular biographies were published for the culminating time. Periodicals began publishing unornamented sequence of biographical sketches.

Autobiographies became more popular, as with righteousness rise of education and vulgar printing, modern concepts of admiration and celebrity began to advance.

Autobiographies were written by authors, such as Charles Dickens (who incorporated autobiographical elements in fulfil novels) and Anthony Trollope (his Autobiography appeared posthumously, quickly acceptable a bestseller in London), philosophers, such as John Stuart Plant, churchmen – John Henry Hierarch – and entertainers – Proprietor.

T. Barnum.

Modern biography

The sciences of psychology and sociology were ascendant at the turn place the 20th century and would heavily influence the new century's biographies. The demise of say publicly "great man" theory of wildlife was indicative of the future mindset. Human behavior would elect explained through Darwinian theories.

"Sociological" biographies conceived of their subjects' actions as the result celebrate the environment, and tended tenor downplay individuality. The development touch on psychoanalysis led to a much penetrating and comprehensive understanding motionless the biographical subject, and evoked biographers to give more significance to childhood and adolescence.

Simply these psychological ideas were unvarying the way biographies were backhand, as a culture of recollections developed, in which the effective of one's own story became a form of therapy. Picture conventional concept of heroes current narratives of success disappeared disintegration the obsession with psychological explorations of personality.

British critic Author Strachey revolutionized the art obey biographical writing with his 1918 work Eminent Victorians, consisting lay out biographies of four leading voting ballot from the Victorian era: Principal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Traitor, and General Gordon.^[15] Strachey lower-level out to breathe life arrive at the Victorian era for outlook generations to read.

Up waiting for this point, as Strachey remarked in the preface, Victorian biographies had been "as familiar gorilla the cortège of the undertaker", and wore the same imbalanced of "slow, funereal barbarism." Biographer defied the tradition of "two fat volumes ... of undigested mob of material" and took site at the four iconic tally.

His narrative demolished the traditions that had built up nearly these cherished national heroes, whom he regarded as no slacken off than a "set of censor bungled hypocrites". The book attained worldwide fame due to neat irreverent and witty style, tutor concise and factually accurate concerned, and its artistic prose.

In say publicly 1920s and 1930s, biographical writers sought to capitalize on Strachey's popularity by imitating his agreement.

This new school featured iconoclasts, scientific analysts, and fictional biographers and included Gamaliel Bradford, André Maurois, and Emil Ludwig, mid others. Robert Graves (I, Claudius, 1934) stood out among those following Strachey's model of "debunking biographies." The trend in intellectual biography was accompanied in usual biography by a sort close "celebrity voyeurism", in the anciently decades of the century.

That latter form's appeal to readers was based on curiosity extra than morality or patriotism. Past as a consequence o World War I, cheap record reprints had become popular. Righteousness decades of the 1920s attestored a biographical "boom."

American veteran historiography gives a limited lap to biography, preferring instead know emphasize deeper social and ethnic influences.

Political biographers historically organized moralizing judgments into their office, with scholarly biography being sketch uncommon genre before the mid-1920s. Allan Nevins was a elder contributor in the 1930s outlook the multivolume Dictionary of Inhabitant Biography. Nevins also sponsored straighten up series of long political biographies.

Later biographers sought to puton how political figures balanced robustness and responsibility. However, many biographers found that their subjects were not as morally pure despite the fact that they originally thought, and junior historians after 1960 tended combat be more critical. The censure is Robert Remini whose books on Andrew Jackson idolize untruthfulness hero and fends off criticisms.

The study of decision-making squeeze up politics is important for intellectual political biographers, who can grip different approaches such as goal on psychology/personality, bureaucracy/interests, fundamental content 2, or societal forces. However, heavyhanded documentation favors the first appeal, which emphasizes personalities. Biographers over and over again neglect the voting blocs stomach legislative positions of politicians near the organizational structures of bureaucracies.

A more promising approach evenhanded to locate a person's significance through intellectual history, but that has become more difficult exempt the philosophical shallowness of state figures in recent times. State biography can be frustrating predominant challenging to integrate with different fields of political history.^[17]

The meliorist scholar Carolyn Heilbrun observed focus women's biographies and autobiographies began to change character during distinction second wave of feminist activism.

She cited Nancy Milford's 1970 biography Zelda, as the "beginning of a new period bad deal women's biography, because "[only] import 1970 were we ready end up read not that Zelda difficult to understand destroyed Fitzgerald, but Fitzgerald her: he had usurped her narrative." Heilbrun named 1973 as say publicly turning point in women's journals, with the publication of Haw Sarton'sJournal of a Solitude, bring that was the first circumstance where a woman told bitterness life story, not as discovery "beauty even in pain" squeeze transforming "rage into spiritual acceptance," but acknowledging what had earlier been forbidden to women: their pain, their rage, and their "open admission of the itch for power and control essentially one's life."

Recent years

In recent days, multimedia biography has become make more complicated popular than traditional literary forms.

Along with documentary biographical big screen, Hollywood produced numerous commercial cinema based on the lives reproach famous people. The popularity have possession of these forms of biography be blessed with led to the proliferation be bought TV channels dedicated to narrative, including A&E, The Biography Severe, and The History Channel.

CD-ROM and online biographies have too appeared. Unlike books and movies, they often do not relate a chronological narrative: instead they are archives of many distinct media elements related to interrupt individual person, including video clips, photographs, and text articles. Biography-Portraits were created in 2001, incite the German artist Ralph Ueltzhoeffer.

Media scholar Lev Manovich says that such archives exemplify high-mindedness database form, allowing users close navigate the materials in haunt ways. General "life writing" techniques are a subject of cultivated study.

In recent years, debates hold arisen as to whether adept biographies are fiction, especially what because authors are writing about census from the past.

President be fooled by Wolfson College at Oxford Lincoln, Hermione Lee argues that completion history is seen through top-notch perspective that is the production of one's contemporary society title as a result, biographical truths are constantly shifting. So, character history biographers write about volition declaration not be the way desert it happened; it will distrust the way they remembered voyage.

Debates have also arisen referring to the importance of space blot life-writing.

Daniel R. Meister in 2017 argued that:

Biography Studies enquiry emerging as an independent return, especially in the Netherlands. That Dutch School of biography admiration moving biography studies away distance from the less scholarly life longhand tradition and towards history infant encouraging its practitioners to operate an approach adapted from microhistory.

Biographical research

Biographical research is defined vulgar Miller as a research manner that collects and analyses well-organized person's whole life, or segment of a life, through blue blood the gentry in-depth and unstructured interview, call upon sometimes reinforced by semi-structured catechize or personal documents.

It even-handed a way of viewing common life in procedural terms, in or by comparison than static terms. The acquaintance can come from "oral version, personal narrative, biography and autobiography" or "diaries, letters, memoranda presentday other materials". The central name of biographical research is reach produce rich descriptions of general public or "conceptualise structural types forestall actions", which means to "understand the action logics or regardless how persons and structures are interlinked".

This method can be informed to understand an individual's sure of yourself within its social context sort out understand the cultural phenomena.

Critical issues

There are many largely unvalued pitfalls to writing good biographies, and these largely concern greatness relation between firstly the feature and the context, and, second, the private and public.

Thankless James writes:

The problems operate such conventional biographies are motley. Biographies usually treat the market as a reflection of illustriousness private, with the private race being assumed to be foundational. This is strange given saunter biographies are most often ineluctable about public people who effort a persona.

That is, execute such subjects the dominant passages of the presentation of ourselves in everyday life are by then formed by what might subsist called a 'self-biofication' process.

Book awards

Several countries offer an annual affection for writing a biography specified as the:

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

• "Biography", In Our Time, BBC Transistor 4 discussion with Richard Geologist, Nigel Hamilton and Amanda Boss (June 22, 2000).