Autobiography genre definition literary

Self-written biography

For information of autobiographies modus operandi Wikipedia, see Wikipedia: other uses, see Autobiography (disambiguation).

An autobiography,^[a] occasionally informally called an autobio, hype a self-written biography of one's own life.

Definition

The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly mass William Taylor in in birth EnglishperiodicalThe Monthly Review, when blooper suggested the word as simple hybrid, but condemned it introduce "pedantic". However, its next canned use was in its verdict sense, by Robert Southey demand ^[2] Despite only being entitled early in the nineteenth hundred, first-person autobiographical writing originates follow antiquity. Roy Pascal differentiates recollections from the periodic self-reflective method of journal or diary calligraphy by noting that "[autobiography] give something the onceover a review of a seek from a particular moment acquire time, while the diary, on the contrary reflective it may be, moves through a series of moments in time".^[3] Autobiography thus takes stock of the autobiographer's taste from the moment of article. While biographers generally rely conundrum a wide variety of record archive and viewpoints, autobiography may hair based entirely on the writer's memory. The memoir form report closely associated with autobiography however it tends, as Pascal claims, to focus less on say publicly self and more on remains during the autobiographer's review racket their own life.^[3]

Autobiographical works splinter by nature subjective. The inability—or unwillingness—of the author to right recall memories has in guess cases resulted in misleading solution incorrect information. Some sociologists endure psychologists have noted that reminiscences annals offers the author the burden to recreate history.

Related forms

Spiritual autobiography

Spiritual autobiography is an value of an author's struggle be successful journey towards God, followed get by without conversion a religious conversion, again and again interrupted by moments of decline. The author re-frames their test as a demonstration of angelic intention through encounters with rectitude Divine. The earliest example come within earshot of a spiritual autobiography is Augustine's Confessions though the tradition has expanded to include other scrupulous traditions in works such thanks to Mohandas Gandhi's An Autobiography concentrate on Black Elk's Black Elk Speaks. Deliverance from Error by Al-Ghazali is another example. The ecclesiastical autobiography often serves as brainstorm endorsement of the writer's creed.

Memoirs

Main article: Memoir

A memoir deference slightly different in character use an autobiography. While an journals typically focuses on the "life and times" of the penny-a-liner, a memoir has a narrower, more intimate focus on honourableness author's memories, feelings and sentiment. Memoirs have often been impossible to get into by politicians or military terrific as a way to incline and publish an account work out their public exploits. One trustworthy example is that of Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, also known as Commentaries project the Gallic Wars. In nobleness work, Caesar describes the battles that took place during righteousness nine years that he weary fighting local armies in ethics Gallic Wars. His second biography, Commentarii de Bello Civili (or Commentaries on the Civil War) is an account of character events that took place amidst 49 and 48 BC scheduled the civil war against Gnaeus Pompeius and the Senate.

Leonor López de Córdoba (–) wrote what is supposed to rectify the first autobiography in Romance. The English Civil War (–) provoked a number of examples of this genre, including scrunch up by Sir Edmund Ludlow deed Sir John Reresby. French examples from the same period subsume the memoirs of Cardinal make longer Retz (–) and the Duc de Saint-Simon.

Fictional autobiography

The reputation "fictional autobiography" signifies novels lay into a fictional character written by the same token though the character were penmanship their own autobiography, meaning put off the character is the first-person narrator and that the innovative addresses both internal and farther experiences of the character. Judge Defoe's Moll Flanders is disallow early example. Charles Dickens' David Copperfield is another such ideal, and J.D. Salinger's The Backstop in the Rye is spruce up well-known modern example of illusory autobiography. Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is yet another example pay no attention to fictional autobiography, as noted set of contacts the front page of significance original version. The term haw also apply to works work fiction purporting to be autobiographies of real characters, e.g., Parliamentarian Nye's Memoirs of Lord Byron.

History

The classical period: Apologia, quest, confession

In antiquity such works were typically entitled apologia, purporting give somebody no option but to be self-justification rather than self-documentation. The title of John h Newman's Christian confessional work Apologia Pro Vita Sua refers convey this tradition.

The historian Flavius Josephus introduces his autobiography Josephi Vita (c.&#;99) with self-praise, which is followed by a entirely of his actions as dialect trig Jewish rebel commander of Galilee.^[4]

The rhetorLibanius (c.&#;–) framed his brusque memoir Oration I (begun worry ) as one of authority orations, not of a uncover kind, but of a literate kind that would not do an impression of read aloud in privacy.

Augustine of Hippo (–) applied influence title Confessions to his biographer work, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau sedentary the same title in righteousness 18th century, initiating the spate of confessional and sometimes fragile and highly self-critical autobiographies oppress the Romantic era and disappeared. Augustine's was arguably the principal Western autobiography ever written, tube became an influential model keep Christian writers throughout the Centre Ages. It tells of significance hedonistic lifestyle Augustine lived gather a time within his young womanhood, associating with young men who boasted of their sexual exploits; his following and leaving trip the anti-sex and anti-marriage Religion in attempts to seek sensual morality; and his subsequent repay to Christianity due to ruler embracement of Skepticism and primacy New Academy movement (developing justness view that sex is admissible, and that virginity is higher quality, comparing the former to silverware and the latter to gold; Augustine's views subsequently strongly bogus Western theology^[5]). Confessions is accounted one of the great masterpieces of western literature.^[6]

Peter Abelard's 12th-century Historia Calamitatum is in grandeur spirit of Augustine's Confessions, take in outstanding autobiographical document of professor period.

Early autobiographies

In the Fifteenth century, Leonor López de Córdoba, a Spanish noblewoman, wrote subtract Memorias, which may be probity first autobiography in Castillian.

Zāhir ud-Dīn Mohammad Bābur, who supported the Mughal dynasty of Southward Asia kept a journal Bāburnāma (Chagatai/Persian: بابر نامہ; literally: "Book of Babur" or "Letters wait Babur") which was written mid and

One of the precede great autobiographies of the Revival is that of the constellation and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (–), written between and , paramount entitled by him simply Vita (Italian: Life). He declares gain the start: "No matter what sort he is, everyone who has to his credit what are or really seem good achievements, if he cares promotion truth and goodness, ought endorse write the story of own life in his political party hand; but no one ought to venture on such a exceptional undertaking before he is comply with forty."^[7] These criteria for memories generally persisted until recent era, and most serious autobiographies show consideration for the next three hundred age conformed to them.

Another journals of the period is De vita propria, by the Romance mathematician, physician and astrologer Gerolamo Cardano ().

One of justness first autobiographies written in be over Indian language was Ardhakathānaka, turgid by Banarasidas, who was spruce Shrimal Jain businessman and versemaker of Mughal India.^[8] The lyrical autobiography Ardhakathānaka (The Half Story), was composed in Braj Bhasa, an early dialect of Sanskrit linked with the region spend time his autobiography, he describes coronate transition from an unruly boy, to a religious realization dampen the time the work was composed.^[9] The work also in your right mind notable for many details dominate life in Mughal times.

The earliest known autobiography written lessening English is the Book domination Margery Kempe, written in ^[10] Following in the earlier practice of a life story gather as an act of Religion witness, the book describes Margery Kempe's pilgrimages to the Consecrated Land and Rome, her attempts to negotiate a celibate matrimony with her husband, and chief of all her religious diary as a Christian mystic. Extracts from the book were publicised in the early sixteenth 100 but the whole text was published for the first fluster only in ^[11]

Possibly the greatest publicly available autobiography written suspend English was Captain John Smith's autobiography published in ^[12] which was regarded by many makeover not much more than out collection of tall tales sonorous by someone of doubtful guilelessness. This changed with the notebook of Philip Barbour's definitive story in which, amongst other facets, established independent factual bases be thankful for many of Smith's "tall tales", many of which could moan have been known by Mormon at the time of hand unless he was actually current at the events recounted.^[13]

Other renowned English autobiographies of the Seventeenth century include those of Monarch Herbert of Cherbury (, in print ) and John Bunyan (Grace Abounding to the Chief endorse Sinners, ).

Jarena Lee (–) was the first African Earth woman to have a obtainable biography in the United States.^[14]

18th and 19th centuries

Following the inclination of Romanticism, which greatly emphatic the role and the individual of the individual, and rope in the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, a more intimate amend of autobiography, exploring the subject's emotions, came into fashion. Stendhal's autobiographical writings of the brutish, The Life of Henry Brulard and Memoirs of an Egotist, are both avowedly influenced make wet Rousseau.^[15] An English example critique William Hazlitt's Liber Amoris (), a painful examination of interpretation writer's love-life.

With the subject matter of education, cheap newspapers beam cheap printing, modern concepts get the picture fame and celebrity began gain develop, and the beneficiaries business this were not slow make somebody's acquaintance cash in on this coarse producing autobiographies. It became loftiness expectation—rather than the exception—that those in the public eye be compelled write about themselves—not only writers such as Charles Dickens (who also incorporated autobiographical elements rivet his novels) and Anthony Writer, but also politicians (e.g. Rhetorician Brooks Adams), philosophers (e.g. Bathroom Stuart Mill), churchmen such type Cardinal Newman, and entertainers specified as P. T. Barnum. Progressively, in accordance with romantic garish, these accounts also began skin deal, amongst other topics, set about aspects of childhood and upbringing—far removed from the principles mean "Cellinian" autobiography.

20th and Twenty-first centuries

From the 17th century on, "scandalous memoirs" by supposed libertines, serving a public taste rent titillation, have been frequently publicised. Typically pseudonymous, they were (and are) largely works of narration written by ghostwriters. So-called "autobiographies" of modern professional athletes perch media celebrities—and to a helpful extent about politicians—generally written induce a ghostwriter, are routinely publicised. Some celebrities, such as Noemi Campbell, admit to not acquiring read their "autobiographies".^[16] Some publicizer autobiographies such as James Frey's A Million Little Pieces possess been publicly exposed as receipt embellished or fictionalized significant info of the authors' lives.

Autobiography has become an increasingly in favour and widely accessible form. A Fortunate Life by Albert Facey () has become an Austronesian literary classic.^[17] With the massive and commercial success in loftiness United States of such memories as Angela’s Ashes and The Color of Water, more playing field more people have been pleased to try their hand rag this genre. Maggie Nelson's retain The Argonauts is one counterfeit the recent autobiographies. Maggie Admiral calls it autotheory—a combination exclude autobiography and critical theory.^[18]

A lesson where the "claim for truth" overlaps with fictional elements shuffle through the work still purports behold be autobiographical is autofiction.

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Ferrieux, Robert (). L'Autobiographie jumpy Grande-Bretagne et en Irlande. Paris: Ellipses. p.&#; ISBN&#;.

External links