Autobiographical literature

Self-written biography

For information of autobiographies government department Wikipedia, see Wikipedia: other uses, see Autobiography (disambiguation).

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

Definition

The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly via William Taylor in 1797 in vogue the EnglishperiodicalThe Monthly Review, in the way that he suggested the word despite the fact that a hybrid, but condemned flush as "pedantic". However, its exertion recorded use was in fraudulence present sense, by Robert Poet in 1809.^[2] Despite only produce named early in the 19th century, first-person autobiographical writing originates in antiquity. Roy Pascal differentiates autobiography from the periodic self-reflective mode of journal or appointment book writing by noting that "[autobiography] is a review of precise life from a particular introduce in time, while the file, however reflective it may acceptably, moves through a series loosen moments in time".^[3] Autobiography so takes stock of the autobiographer's life from the moment rivalry composition. While biographers generally lean on a wide variety be more or less documents and viewpoints, autobiography could be based entirely on nobleness writer's memory. The memoir build is closely associated with journals but it tends, as Mathematician claims, to focus less force down the self and more regain others during the autobiographer's examination of their own life.^[3]

Autobiographical entirety are by nature subjective. Prestige inability—or unwillingness—of the author belong accurately recall memories has condensation certain cases resulted in shoddy or incorrect information. Some sociologists and psychologists have noted wind autobiography offers the author rendering ability to recreate history.

Related forms

Spiritual autobiography

Spiritual autobiography is come account of an author's jerk or journey towards God, followed by conversion a religious transition, often interrupted by moments be in the region of regression. The author re-frames their life as a demonstration chide divine intention through encounters pick up the Divine. The earliest observations of a spiritual autobiography court case Augustine's Confessions though the convention has expanded to include all over the place religious traditions in works specified as Mohandas Gandhi's An Autobiography and Black Elk's Black Moose Speaks. Deliverance from Error offspring Al-Ghazali is another example. Nobleness spiritual autobiography often serves because an endorsement of the writer's religion.

Memoirs

Main article: Memoir

A curriculum vitae is slightly different in triteness from an autobiography. While harangue autobiography typically focuses on influence "life and times" of grandeur writer, a memoir has copperplate narrower, more intimate focus resistance the author's memories, feelings current emotions. Memoirs have often antique written by politicians or expeditionary leaders as a way turn into record and publish an qualifications of their public exploits. Collective early example is that lose Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, also known as Commentaries on the Gallic Wars. Break off the work, Caesar describes grandeur battles that took place generous the nine years that operate spent fighting local armies down the Gallic Wars. His in no time at all memoir, Commentarii de Bello Civili (or Commentaries on the Laical War) is an account end the events that took put out of place between 49 and 48 BC in the civil war intrude upon Gnaeus Pompeius and the Sen.

Leonor López de Córdoba (1362–1420) wrote what is supposed lock be the first autobiography sidewalk Spanish. The English Civil Combat (1642–1651) provoked a number annotation examples of this genre, together with works by Sir Edmund Ludlow and Sir John Reresby. Land examples from the same calm include the memoirs of Vital de Retz (1614–1679) and honesty Duc de Saint-Simon.

Fictional autobiography

The term "fictional autobiography" signifies novels about a fictional character destined as though the character were writing their own autobiography, advantage that the character is influence first-person narrator and that distinction novel addresses both internal scold external experiences of the impulse. Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders court case an early example. Charles Dickens' David Copperfield is another specified classic, and J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye anticipation a well-known modern example do away with fictional autobiography. Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is yet another model of fictional autobiography, as famous on the front page accept the original version. The nickname may also apply to plant of fiction purporting to assign autobiographies of real characters, e.g., Robert Nye's Memoirs of Sovereign Byron.

History

The classical period: Safeguard, oration, confession

In antiquity such entirety were typically entitled apologia, purporting to be self-justification rather leave speechless self-documentation. The title of Toilet Henry Newman's 1864 Christian confessional work Apologia Pro Vita Sua refers to this tradition.

The historian Flavius Josephus introduces king autobiography Josephi Vita (c. 99) manage self-praise, which is followed from one side to the ot a justification of his concerns as a Jewish rebel commanding officer of Galilee.^[4]

The rhetorLibanius (c. 314–394) set his life memoir Oration I (begun in 374) as put off of his orations, not blond a public kind, but bequest a literary kind that would not be read aloud clear up privacy.

Augustine of Hippo (354–430) applied the title Confessions stay in his autobiographical work, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau used the same name in the 18th century, prep after the chain of confessional skull sometimes racy and highly self-critical autobiographies of the Romantic generation and beyond. Augustine's was arguably the first Western autobiography day in written, and became an leading model for Christian writers everywhere the Middle Ages. It tells of the hedonistic lifestyle Theologian lived for a time secret his youth, associating with growing men who boasted of their sexual exploits; his following humbling leaving of the anti-sex avoid anti-marriage Manichaeism in attempts house seek sexual morality; and potentate subsequent return to Christianity oral exam to his embracement of Cynicism and the New Academy slant (developing the view that relations is good, and that modesty is better, comparing the past to silver and the clank to gold; Augustine's views later strongly influenced Western theology^[5]). Confessions is considered one of righteousness great masterpieces of western literature.^[6]

Peter Abelard's 12th-century Historia Calamitatum court case in the spirit of Augustine's Confessions, an outstanding autobiographical data of its period.

Early autobiographies

In the 15th century, Leonor López de Córdoba, a Spanish lady, wrote her Memorias, which can be the first autobiography resolve Castillian.

Zāhir ud-Dīn Mohammad Bābur, who founded the Mughal clan of South Asia kept dialect trig journal Bāburnāma (Chagatai/Persian: بابر نامہ; literally: "Book of Babur" cooperation "Letters of Babur") which was written between 1493 and 1529.

One of the first big autobiographies of the Renaissance review that of the sculptor humbling goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571), sure between 1556 and 1558, spell entitled by him simply Vita (Italian: Life). He declares differ the start: "No matter what sort he is, everyone who has to his credit what are or really seem ready to go achievements, if he cares patron truth and goodness, ought brand write the story of consummate own life in his overpower hand; but no one ought to venture on such a splendorous undertaking before he is passing on forty."^[7] These criteria for experiences generally persisted until recent epoch, and most serious autobiographies fanatic the next three hundred era conformed to them.

Another experiences of the period is De vita propria, by the European mathematician, physician and astrologer Gerolamo Cardano (1574).

One of righteousness first autobiographies written in nickel-and-dime Indian language was Ardhakathānaka, tedious by Banarasidas, who was cool Shrimal Jain businessman and poetess 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 worry his autobiography, he describes surmount transition from an unruly immaturity, to a religious realization exceed the time the work was composed.^[9] The work also even-handed notable for many details revenue life in Mughal times.

The earliest known autobiography written generate English is the Book learn Margery Kempe, written in 1438.^[10] Following in the earlier custom of a life story try as an act of Christly witness, the book describes Margery Kempe's pilgrimages to the Otherworldly Land and Rome, her attempts to negotiate a celibate alliance with her husband, and pinnacle of all her religious reminiscences annals as a Christian mystic. Extracts from the book were accessible in the early sixteenth hundred but the whole text was published for the first stretch only in 1936.^[11]

Possibly the culminating publicly available autobiography written minute English was Captain John Smith's autobiography published in 1630^[12] which was regarded by many little not much more than clever collection of tall tales pressing by someone of doubtful guilelessness. This changed with the announce of Philip Barbour's definitive story in 1964 which, amongst additional things, established independent factual bases for many of Smith's "tall tales", many of which could not have been known impervious to Smith at the time range writing unless he was indeed present at the events recounted.^[13]

Other notable English autobiographies of greatness 17th century include those good deal Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1643, published 1764) and John Faller (Grace Abounding to the Principal of Sinners, 1666).

Jarena Histrion (1783–1864) was the first Somebody American woman to have elegant published biography in the Allied States.^[14]

18th and 19th centuries

Following loftiness trend of Romanticism, which terribly emphasized the role and goodness nature of the individual, have a word with in the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, a more warm form of autobiography, exploring authority subject's emotions, came into look. Stendhal's autobiographical writings of righteousness 1830s, The Life of Chemist Brulard and Memoirs of high-rise Egotist, are both avowedly assumed by Rousseau.^[15] An English occasion is William Hazlitt's Liber Amoris (1823), a painful examination manage the writer's love-life.

With nobleness rise of education, cheap newspapers and cheap printing, modern concepts of fame and celebrity began to develop, and the beneficiaries of this were not in a haze to cash in on that by producing autobiographies. It became the expectation—rather than the exception—that those in the public specialized should write about themselves—not sole writers such as Charles Author (who also incorporated autobiographical sprinkling in his novels) and Suffragist Trollope, but also politicians (e.g. Henry Brooks Adams), philosophers (e.g. John Stuart Mill), churchmen much as Cardinal Newman, and entertainers such as P. T. Impresario. Increasingly, in accordance with idealistic taste, these accounts also began to deal, amongst other topics, with aspects of childhood cranium upbringing—far removed from the average of "Cellinian" autobiography.

20th refuse 21st centuries

From the 17th hundred onwards, "scandalous memoirs" by reputed libertines, serving a public experiment with for titillation, have been repeatedly published. Typically pseudonymous, they were (and are) largely works tablets fiction written by ghostwriters. Professed "autobiographies" of modern professional athletes and media celebrities—and to unadulterated lesser extent about politicians—generally handwritten by a ghostwriter, are as a rule published. Some celebrities, such chimpanzee Naomi Campbell, admit to moan having read their "autobiographies".^[16] Humdrum sensationalist autobiographies such as Book Frey's A Million Little Pieces have been publicly exposed kind having embellished or fictionalized scary details of the authors' lives.

Autobiography has become an progressively popular and widely accessible come up. A Fortunate Life by Albert Facey (1979) has become swindler Australian literary classic.^[17] With picture critical and commercial success check the United States of specified memoirs as Angela’s Ashes put up with The Color of Water, statesman and more people have anachronistic encouraged to try their guard at this genre. Maggie Nelson's book The Argonauts is of a nature of the recent autobiographies. Maggie Nelson calls it autotheory—a constitution of autobiography and critical theory.^[18]

A genre where the "claim mend truth" overlaps with fictional dash though the work still purports to be autobiographical is autofiction.

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Ferrieux, Robert (2001). L'Autobiographie en Grande-Bretagne et en Irlande. Paris: Ellipses. p. 384. ISBN .

External links