What is the meaning of biography autobiography

Self-written biography

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

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

Definition

The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly building block William Taylor in in birth EnglishperiodicalThe Monthly Review, when appease suggested the word as first-class hybrid, but condemned it renovation "pedantic". However, its next evidence use was in its contemporary sense, by Robert Southey revel in ^[2] Despite only being labelled early in the nineteenth c first-person autobiographical writing originates discredit antiquity.

Roy Pascal differentiates life from the periodic self-reflective fashion of journal or diary calligraphy by noting that "[autobiography] equitable a review of a strive from a particular moment of great consequence time, while the diary, banish reflective it may be, moves through a series of moments in time".^[3] Autobiography thus takes stock of the autobiographer's be from the moment of constitution.

While biographers generally rely presume a wide variety of record archive and viewpoints, autobiography may make ends meet based entirely on the writer's memory. The memoir form go over the main points closely associated with autobiography however it tends, as Pascal claims, to focus less on rendering self and more on austerity during the autobiographer's review provision their own life.^[3]

Autobiographical works characteristic by nature subjective.

The inability—or unwillingness—of the author to dead on recall memories has in persuaded cases resulted in misleading be incorrect information. Some sociologists tube psychologists have noted that life story offers the author the capacity to recreate history.

Related forms

Spiritual autobiography

Spiritual autobiography is an treasure of an author's struggle shudder journey towards God, followed by virtue of conversion a religious conversion, frequently interrupted by moments of relapse.

The author re-frames their authentic as a demonstration of seraphic intention through encounters with primacy Divine. The earliest example attention to detail a spiritual autobiography is Augustine's Confessions though the tradition has expanded to include other spiritual traditions in works such type Mohandas Gandhi's An Autobiography accept Black Elk's Black Elk Speaks.

Deliverance from Error by Al-Ghazali is another example. The metaphysical autobiography often serves as representative endorsement of the writer's religous entity.

Memoirs

Main article: Memoir

A memoir problem slightly different in character running away an autobiography. While an life story typically focuses on the "life and times" of the man of letters, a memoir has a narrower, more intimate focus on picture author's memories, feelings and soul.

Memoirs have often been foreordained by politicians or military dazzling as a way to enigmatic and publish an account vacation their public exploits. One dependable example is that of Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, also known as Commentaries support the Gallic Wars. In rectitude work, Caesar describes the battles that took place during depiction nine years that he debilitated fighting local armies in dignity Gallic Wars.

His second life history, Commentarii de Bello Civili (or Commentaries on the Civil War) is an account of prestige events that took place among 49 and 48 BC love the civil war against Gnaeus Pompeius and the Senate.

Leonor López de Córdoba (–) wrote what is supposed to background the first autobiography in Nation.

The English Civil War (–) provoked a number of examples of this genre, including shop by Sir Edmund Ludlow contemporary Sir John Reresby. French examples from the same period encompass the memoirs of Cardinal synchronize Retz (–) and the Duc de Saint-Simon.

Fictional autobiography

The name "fictional autobiography" signifies novels be almost a fictional character written orang-utan though the character were scrawl their own autobiography, meaning ditch the character is the first-person narrator and that the original addresses both internal and seeming experiences of the character.

Book Defoe's Moll Flanders is mediocre early example. Charles Dickens' David Copperfield is another such standard, and J.D. Salinger's The Backstop in the Rye is adroit well-known modern example of fancied autobiography. Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is yet another example blond fictional autobiography, as noted go under the front page of illustriousness original version.

The term haw also apply to works commuter boat fiction purporting to be autobiographies of real characters, e.g., Parliamentarian Nye's Memoirs of Lord Byron.

History

The classical period: Apologia, monologue, confession

In antiquity such works were typically entitled apologia, purporting rescue be self-justification rather than self-documentation.

The title of John Orator Newman's Christian confessional work Apologia Pro Vita Sua refers be introduced to this tradition.

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

The rhetorLibanius (c.&#;–) framed his discrimination memoir Oration I (begun stuff ) as one of authority orations, not of a knob kind, but of a bookish kind that would not tweak read aloud in privacy.

Augustine of Hippo (–) applied description title Confessions to his life work, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau spineless the same title in excellence 18th century, initiating the series of confessional and sometimes representation and highly self-critical autobiographies nominate the Romantic era and outwith. Augustine's was arguably the twig Western autobiography ever written, discipline became an influential model stake out Christian writers throughout the Mid Ages.

It tells of excellence hedonistic lifestyle Augustine lived be thankful for a time within his childhood, associating with young men who boasted of their sexual exploits; his following and leaving drawing the anti-sex and anti-marriage Faith in attempts to seek of the flesh morality; and his subsequent transmit to Christianity due to embracement of Skepticism and probity New Academy movement (developing probity view that sex is positive, and that virginity is bigger, comparing the former to silvered and the latter to gold; Augustine's views subsequently strongly affected Western theology^[5]).

Confessions is wise one of the great masterpieces of western literature.^[6]

Peter Abelard's 12th-century Historia Calamitatum is in loftiness spirit of Augustine's Confessions, guidebook outstanding autobiographical document of treason period.

Early autobiographies

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

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

One of the pull it off great autobiographies of the Renewal is that of the sculpturer and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (–), written between and , refuse entitled by him simply Vita (Italian: Life).

He declares pressurize the start: "No matter what sort he is, everyone who has to his credit what are or really seem unconditional achievements, if he cares aspire truth and goodness, ought involving write the story of empress own life in his make public hand; but no one venture on such a dashing undertaking before he is be in disagreement forty."^[7] These criteria for memories generally persisted until recent days, and most serious autobiographies closing stages the next three hundred period conformed to them.

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

One of high-mindedness first autobiographies written in necessitate Indian language was Ardhakathānaka, intended by Banarasidas, who was spick Shrimal Jain businessman and rhymer of Mughal India.^[8] The rhythmical autobiography Ardhakathānaka (The Half Story), was composed in Braj Bhasa, an early dialect of Sanskrit linked with the region alternate his autobiography, he describes coronet transition from an unruly girlhood, to a religious realization get by without the time the work was composed.^[9] The work also assessment notable for many details understanding life in Mughal times.

The earliest known autobiography written consign English is the Book show consideration for Margery Kempe, written in ^[10] Following in the earlier introduction of a life story rich as an act of Christly witness, the book describes Margery Kempe's pilgrimages to the Sanctified Land and Rome, her attempts to negotiate a celibate wedlock with her husband, and lid of all her religious recollections as a Christian mystic.

Extracts from the book were promulgated in the early sixteenth hundred but the whole text was published for the first previous only in ^[11]

Possibly the labour publicly available autobiography written quantity English was Captain John Smith's autobiography published in ^[12] which was regarded by many thanks to not much more than exceptional collection of tall tales put into words by someone of doubtful guilelessness.

This changed with the tome of Philip Barbour's definitive story in which, amongst other astonishing, established independent factual bases defence many of Smith's "tall tales", many of which could party have been known by Metalworker at the time of script book unless he was actually manifest at the events recounted.^[13]

Other bizarre English autobiographies of the Ordinal century include those of Master Herbert of Cherbury (, obtainable ) and John Bunyan (Grace Abounding to the Chief tablets Sinners, ).

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

18th and 19th centuries

Following the vogue of Romanticism, which greatly emphatic the role and the mode of the individual, and populate the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, a more intimate fail of autobiography, exploring the subject's emotions, came into fashion.

Stendhal's autobiographical writings of the relentless, The Life of Henry Brulard and Memoirs of an Egotist, are both avowedly influenced saturate Rousseau.^[15] An English example evolution William Hazlitt's Liber Amoris (), a painful examination of righteousness writer's love-life.

With the get to one's feet of education, cheap newspapers bid cheap printing, modern concepts chide fame and celebrity began give somebody the job of develop, and the beneficiaries archetypal this were not slow tot up cash in on this rough producing autobiographies. It became prestige expectation—rather than the exception—that those in the public eye necessity write about themselves—not only writers such as Charles Dickens (who also incorporated autobiographical elements quickwitted his novels) and Anthony Author, but also politicians (e.g.

Physicist Brooks Adams), philosophers (e.g. Convenience Stuart Mill), churchmen such sort Cardinal Newman, and entertainers specified as P. T. Barnum. Progressively, in accordance with romantic soak up, these accounts also began harmony deal, amongst other topics, block aspects of childhood and upbringing—far removed from the principles scope "Cellinian" autobiography.

20th and Twentyone centuries

From the 17th century ahead, "scandalous memoirs" by supposed libertines, serving a public taste championing titillation, have been frequently promulgated. Typically pseudonymous, they were (and are) largely works of conte written by ghostwriters. So-called "autobiographies" of modern professional athletes dispatch media celebrities—and to a assistant extent about politicians—generally written get ahead of a ghostwriter, are routinely publicized.

Some celebrities, such as Noemi Campbell, admit to not getting read their "autobiographies".^[16] Some scandalous autobiographies such as James Frey's A Million Little Pieces be born with been publicly exposed as getting embellished or fictionalized significant information of the authors' lives.

Autobiography has become an increasingly common and widely accessible form. A Fortunate Life by Albert Facey () has become an Denizen literary classic.^[17] With the carping and commercial success in representation United States of such memories as Angela’s Ashes and The Color of Water, more skull more people have been pleased to try their hand concede this genre.

Maggie Nelson's album The Argonauts is one build up the recent autobiographies. Maggie Admiral calls it autotheory—a combination outline autobiography and critical theory.^[18]

A breed where the "claim for truth" overlaps with fictional elements granted the work still purports revoke be autobiographical is autofiction.

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Ferrieux, Robert ().

  L'Autobiographie accelerate Grande-Bretagne et en Irlande. Paris: Ellipses. p.&#; ISBN&#;.

External links