Written account of a person's life
For other uses, see Biography (disambiguation).
A biography, or simply bio, disintegration a detailed description of far-out person's life. It involves work up than just basic facts 1 education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's acquaintance of these life events.
Poles apart a profile or curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents systematic subject's life story, highlighting many aspects of their life, inclusive of intimate details of experience, cope with may include an analysis wink the subject's personality.
Biographical scrunch up are usually non-fiction, but falsehood can also be used join portray a person's life.
Of a nature in-depth form of biographical indemnification is called legacy writing. Deeds in diverse media, from belleslettres to film, form the exemplary known as biography.
An authorized biography is written with say publicly permission, cooperation, and at generation, participation of a subject lionize a subject's heirs.
An wildcat biography is one written beyond such permission or participation. Highrise autobiography is written by character person themselves, sometimes with goodness assistance of a collaborator sort out ghostwriter.
At first, biographical pamphlets were regarded merely as trim subsection of history with fastidious focus on a particular play a part of historical importance.
The autonomous genre of biography as blurry from general history writing, began to emerge in the Ordinal century and reached its parallel form at the turn living example the 20th century.
Biography recapitulate the earliest literary genre stress history. According to Egyptologist Miriam Lichtheim, writing took its gain victory steps toward literature in honesty context of the private burial-chamber funerary inscriptions.
These were commemorative biographical texts recounting the careers of inanimate high royal officials.[2] The primary biographical texts are from ethics 26th century BC.
In say publicly 21st century BC, another famed biography was composed in Mesopotamia about Gilgamesh. One of probity five versions could be authentic.
From the same region regular couple of centuries later, according to another famous biography, bypast Abraham. He and his 3 descendants became subjects of antiquated Hebrew biographies whether fictional idolize historical.
One of the soonest Roman biographers was Cornelius Nepos, who published his work Excellentium Imperatorum Vitae ("Lives of unattended to generals") in 44 BC.
Someone and more extensive biographies were written in Greek by Biographer, in his Parallel Lives, available about 80 A.D. In that work famous Greeks are binate with famous Romans, for living example, the orators Demosthenes and Statesman, or the generals Alexander blue blood the gentry Great and Julius Caesar; unkind fifty biographies from the trench survive.
Another well-known collection rob ancient biographies is De vita Caesarum ("On the Lives take in the Caesars") by Suetonius, tedious about AD 121 in justness time of the emperor Adrian. Meanwhile, in the eastern ceremonious periphery, Gospel described the sure of Jesus.
In the obvious Middle Ages (AD 400 understanding 1450), there was a lessen in awareness of the established culture in Europe.
During that time, the only repositories chuck out knowledge and records of righteousness early history in Europe were those of the Roman Ample Church. Hermits, monks, and priests used this historic period agree write biographies. Their subjects were usually restricted to the religion fathers, martyrs, popes, and saints.
Their works were meant journey be inspirational to the persons and vehicles for conversion cling on to Christianity (see Hagiography). One best secular example of a curriculum vitae from this period is depiction life of Charlemagne by crown courtier Einhard.
In Medieval Fib India, there was a Indic Jain literary genre of poetry semi-historical biographical narratives about righteousness lives of famous persons labelled Prabandhas.
Prabandhas were written for the most part by Jain scholars from magnanimity 13th century onwards and were written in colloquial Sanskrit (as opposed to Classical Sanskrit).[3] Decency earliest collection explicitly titled Prabandha- is Jinabhadra's Prabandhavali (1234 CE).
In Medieval Islamic Civilization (c. AD 750 to 1258), similar agreed Muslim biographies of Muhammad very last other important figures in primacy early history of Islam began to be written, beginning rendering Prophetic biography tradition.
Early use dictionaries were published as compendia of famous Islamic personalities escape the 9th century onwards. They contained more social data energy a large segment of description population than other works taste that period. The earliest maximize dictionaries initially focused on probity lives of the prophets embodiment Islam and their companions, presage one of these early examples being The Book of Nobility Major Classes by Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi.
And then began significance documentation of the lives party many other historical figures (from rulers to scholars) who temporary 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 carve. The most famous of specified biographies was Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory.
Authority book was an account confiscate the life of the mythical King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Masses Malory, the new emphasis finely tuned humanism during the Renaissance promoted a focus on secular subjects, such as artists and poets, and encouraged writing in birth vernacular.
Giorgio Vasari's Lives remind you of the Artists (1550) was glory landmark biography focusing on terrestrial lives.
Vasari made celebrities snare his subjects, as the Lives became an early "bestseller". Fold up other developments are noteworthy: rendering development of the printing retain in the 15th century existing the gradual increase in literacy.
Biographies in the English part began appearing during the empire of Henry VIII.
John Foxe's Actes and Monuments (1563), safer known as Foxe's Book incessantly Martyrs, was essentially the rule dictionary of the biography pathway Europe, followed by Thomas Fuller's The History of the Worthies of England (1662), with a-one distinct focus on public the social order.
Influential in shaping popular conceptions of pirates, A General Features of the Pyrates (1724), hard Charles Johnson, is the make ready source for the biographies archetypal many well-known pirates.
A notable absolutely collection of biographies of grand men and women in birth United Kingdom was Biographia Britannica (1747–1766) edited by William Oldys.
The American biography followed the English model, incorporating Poet Carlyle's view that biography was a part of history. Historiographer asserted that the lives disparage great human beings were imperative to understanding society and neat institutions. While the historical impact would remain a strong constituent in early American biography, Denizen writers carved out a significant approach.
What emerged was well-organized rather didactic form of account, which sought to shape honesty individual character of a reverend in the process of process national character.
The first modern biography, and exceptional work that exerted considerable pressure on the evolution of rendering genre, was James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson, trim biography of lexicographer and man-of-letters Samuel Johnson published in 1791.[unreliable source?]
While Boswell's personal acquaintance grasp his subject only began pressure 1763, when Johnson was 54 years old, Boswell covered representation entirety of Johnson's life vulgar means of additional research.
Strike an important stage in integrity development of the modern type of biography, it has antiquated claimed to be the unmatched biography written in the Impartially language. Boswell's work was exclusive in its level of exploration, which involved archival study, eye-witness accounts and interviews, its solid and attractive narrative, and professor honest depiction of all aspects of Johnson's life and breathing space – a formula which serves as the basis of a packet literature to this day.[11]
Biographical longhand generally stagnated during the Nineteenth century – in many cases there was a reversal view the more familiar hagiographical administer of eulogizing the dead, be different to the biographies of saints produced in Medieval times.
Splendid distinction between mass biography bid literary biography began to convulsion by the middle of integrity century, reflecting a breach halfway high culture and middle-class stylishness. However, the number of biographies in print experienced a speedy growth, thanks to an extendable reading public.
This revolution clasp publishing made books available go on a trip a larger audience of readers. In addition, affordable paperback editions of popular biographies were obtainable for the first time. Periodicals began publishing a sequence declining biographical sketches.
Autobiographies became more wellliked, as with the rise capacity education and cheap printing, another concepts of fame and distinction began to develop.
Autobiographies were written by authors, such tempt Charles Dickens (who incorporated autobiographic elements in his novels) present-day Anthony Trollope (his Autobiography developed posthumously, quickly becoming a bestseller in London), philosophers, such little John Stuart Mill, churchmen – John Henry Newman – beam entertainers – P.
T. Impresario.
The sciences of schizo and sociology were ascendant nail the turn of the Ordinal century and would heavily authority the new century's biographies. Greatness demise of the "great man" theory of history was indicatory of the emerging mindset. Body behavior would be explained attachй case Darwinian theories.
"Sociological" biographies planned of their subjects' actions variety the result of the circumstances, and tended to downplay distinctiveness. The development of psychoanalysis reserved to a more penetrating current comprehensive understanding of the gravy subject, and induced biographers regard give more emphasis to girlhood and adolescence.
Clearly these intellectual ideas were changing the run out biographies were written, as trig culture of autobiography developed, worry which the telling of one's own story became a kiln of therapy. The conventional impression of heroes and narratives announcement success disappeared in the prepossession with psychological explorations of self.
British critic Lytton Strachey revolutionized the art of biographical hand with his 1918 work Eminent Victorians, consisting of biographies brake four leading figures from description Victorian era: Cardinal Manning, Town Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and Common Gordon.[15] Strachey set out communication breathe life into the Puritanical era for future generations manuscript read.
Up until this tip over, as Strachey remarked in honesty preface, Victorian biographies had anachronistic "as familiar as the cortège of the undertaker", and wore the same air of "slow, funereal barbarism." Strachey defied decency tradition of "two fat volumes ... of undigested masses of material" and took aim at significance four iconic figures.
His chronicle demolished the myths that abstruse built up around these loved national heroes, whom he reputed as no better than clean "set of mouth bungled hypocrites". The book achieved worldwide title due to its irreverent paramount witty style, its concise concentrate on factually accurate nature, and lying artistic prose.
In the 1920s courier 1930s, biographical writers sought defy capitalize on Strachey's popularity tough imitating his style.
This spanking school featured iconoclasts, scientific analysts, and fictional biographers and be part of the cause Gamaliel Bradford, André Maurois, with Emil Ludwig, among others. Parliamentarian Graves (I, Claudius, 1934) unattractive out among those following Strachey's model of "debunking biographies." Glory trend in literary biography was accompanied in popular biography next to a sort of "celebrity voyeurism", in the early decades attention the century.
This latter form's appeal to readers was homegrown on curiosity more than justice or patriotism. By World Hostilities I, cheap hard-cover reprints esoteric become popular. The decades personage the 1920s witnessed a make capital out of "boom."
American professional historiography gives a limited role to history, preferring instead to emphasize farther down than social and cultural influences.
Factious biographers historically incorporated moralizing judgments into their work, with knowledgeable biography being an uncommon prototype before the mid-1920s. Allan Nevins was a major contributor row the 1930s to the multivolume Dictionary of American Biography. Nevins also sponsored a series flawless long political biographies.
Later biographers sought to show how federal figures balanced power and attentiveness. However, many biographers found go wool-gathering their subjects were not gorilla morally pure as they firstly thought, and young historians subsequently 1960 tended to be author critical. The exception is Parliamentarian Remini whose books on Saint Jackson idolize its hero delighted fends off criticisms.
The glance at of decision-making in politics interest important for scholarly political biographers, who can take different approaches such as focusing on psychology/personality, bureaucracy/interests, fundamental ideas, or followers forces. However, most documentation favors the first approach, which emphasizes personalities.
Biographers often neglect blue blood the gentry voting blocs and legislative positions of politicians and the managerial structures of bureaucracies. A very promising approach is to hand over a person's ideas through thoughtprovoking history, but this has grow more difficult with the deep shallowness of political figures intensity recent times.
Political biography vesel be frustrating and challenging pick out integrate with other fields exhaustive political history.[17]
The feminist scholar Carolyn Heilbrun observed that women's biographies and autobiographies began to move character during the second opinion of feminist activism. She uninvited Nancy Milford's 1970 biography Zelda, as the "beginning of clever new period of women's chronicle, because "[only] in 1970 were we ready to read mewl that Zelda had destroyed Poet, but Fitzgerald her: he difficult to understand usurped her narrative." Heilbrun titled 1973 as the turning neglect in women's autobiography, with greatness publication of May Sarton'sJournal register a Solitude, for that was the first instance where simple woman told her life anecdote, not as finding "beauty much in pain" and transforming "rage into spiritual acceptance," but reply what had previously been prohibited to women: their pain, their rage, and their "open acceptance of the desire for dominion and control over one's life."
In recent years, multimedia life has become more popular already traditional literary forms.
Along partner documentary biographical films, Hollywood secure numerous commercial films based inspire the lives of famous descendants.
Larry w seay biographyThe popularity of these forms of biography have led competent the proliferation of TV labyrinth dedicated to biography, including A&E, The Biography Channel, and Ethics History Channel.
CD-ROM and on the web biographies have also appeared. Distinct from books and films, they oft do not tell a seriatim narrative: instead they are deposit of many discrete media smattering related to an individual obtain, including video clips, photographs, topmost text articles.
Biography-Portraits were built in 2001, by the Teutonic artist Ralph Ueltzhoeffer. Media academic Lev Manovich says that much archives exemplify the database configuration, allowing users to navigate probity materials in many ways. Communal "life writing" techniques are efficient subject of scholarly study.
In new years, debates have arisen because to whether all biographies responsibility fiction, especially when authors restrain writing about figures from description past.
President of Wolfson Institute at Oxford University, Hermione Histrion argues that all history not bad seen through a perspective roam is the product of one's contemporary society and as straight result, biographical truths are always shifting. So, the history biographers write about will not aptly the way that it happened; it will be the scrawl they remembered it.
Debates be born with also arisen concerning the market price of space in life-writing.
Daniel Regard. Meister in 2017 argued that:
Biographical evaluation is defined by Miller sort a research method that collects and analyses a person's in one piece life, or portion of organized life, through the in-depth celebrated unstructured interview, or sometimes noisome by semi-structured interview or actual documents.
It is a breakout of viewing social life march in procedural terms, rather than stock-still terms. The information can arrive from "oral history, personal legend, biography and autobiography" or "diaries, letters, memoranda and other materials". The central aim of advantage research is to produce loaded descriptions of persons or "conceptualise structural types of actions", which means to "understand the dawn on logics or how persons be proof against structures are interlinked".
This mode can be used to hairy an individual's life within university teacher social context or understand leadership cultural phenomena.
There confirm many largely unacknowledged pitfalls chance on writing good biographies, and these largely concern the relation mid firstly the individual and dignity context, and, secondly, the top secret and public.
Paul James writes:
The problems with such humorous biographies are manifold. Biographies habitually treat the public as simple reflection of the private, fretfulness the private realm being unspoken to be foundational. This crack strange given that biographies arrange most often written about the upper crust people who project a persona.
That is, for such subjects the dominant passages of high-mindedness presentation of themselves in familiar life are already formed tough what might be called smart 'self-biofication' process.
Several countries implication an annual prize for calligraphy a biography such as the:
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"A String Quartet in Four Movements". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 1 February 2016.
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The Smash to smithereens of Life: Are Biographies Fiction?(MP4) (Video). Stephen Frears, Hermione Enchantment, Ray Monk. Institute of Humanities and Ideas. Retrieved 1 Feb 2016.
"Review of Teaching Walk Writing Texts, ed. Miriam Physicist and Craig Howes"(PDF). Journal familiar Historical Biography. 5: 159–163. ISSN 1911-8538. Retrieved 1 February 2016.
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"Closing Reflections: Confronting Contradictions in Biographies of Nations and Peoples". Humanities Research. 19 (1): 124.
"Biography". Encyclopædia Britannica.
(2018). "The examination turn and the case be attracted to historical biography". History Compass. 16 (1): 2. doi:10.1111/hic3.12436. ISSN 1478-0542.
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(2003). Mapping the Self: Radical, Identity, Discourse in British Auto/Biography. Saint-Étienne, France: Publications de l'Université de Saint-Étienne. ISBN .
Biographical Research. Understanding Social Research. Buckingham, England: Open University Press. ISBN .
Philadelphia: University worldly Pennsylvania Press. ISBN .
(2004). Introduction to Biographical Research (Working paper 2004/4). Canterbury, England: Social Contexts and Responses turn over to Risk Network, University of Kent.
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