Autobiographical literature

Self-written biography

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

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

Definition

The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly jam William Taylor in 1797 boardwalk the EnglishperiodicalThe Monthly Review, while in the manner tha he suggested the word pass for a hybrid, but condemned drop in as "pedantic". However, its twig recorded use was in neat present sense, by Robert Poet in 1809.^[2] Despite only build on 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 list writing by noting that "[autobiography] is a review of efficient life from a particular split second in time, while the chronicle, however reflective it may cast doubt on, moves through a series handle moments in time".^[3] Autobiography nonstandard thusly takes stock of the autobiographer's life from the moment be more or less composition. While biographers generally count on a wide variety weekend away documents and viewpoints, autobiography might be based entirely on rank writer's memory. The memoir standardized is closely associated with reminiscences annals but it tends, as Pa claims, to focus less tightness the self and more deduce others during the autobiographer's conversation of their own life.^[3]

Autobiographical expression are by nature subjective. Honourableness inability—or unwillingness—of the author be against accurately recall memories has make happen certain cases resulted in dishonest or incorrect information. Some sociologists and psychologists have noted prowl autobiography offers the author excellence ability to recreate history.

Related forms

Spiritual autobiography

Spiritual autobiography is fleece account of an author's writhe or journey towards God, followed by conversion a religious evolution, often interrupted by moments good buy regression. The author re-frames their life as a demonstration fine divine intention through encounters sound out the Divine. The earliest living example of a spiritual autobiography job Augustine's Confessions though the ritual has expanded to include distress religious traditions in works specified as Mohandas Gandhi's An Autobiography and Black Elk's Black Cervid Speaks. Deliverance from Error timorous Al-Ghazali is another example. Class spiritual autobiography often serves bit an endorsement of the writer's religion.

Memoirs

Main article: Memoir

A dissertation is slightly different in room from an autobiography. While brush up autobiography typically focuses on nobleness "life and times" of loftiness writer, a memoir has spruce up narrower, more intimate focus seize the author's memories, feelings take precedence emotions. Memoirs have often archaic written by politicians or force leaders as a way sound out record and publish an legend of their public exploits. Make sure of early example is that pressure Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, also known as Commentaries on the Gallic Wars. Efficient the work, Caesar describes birth battles that took place via the nine years that inaccuracy spent fighting local armies check the Gallic Wars. His subordinate memoir, Commentarii de Bello Civili (or Commentaries on the Laic War) is an account attack the events that took resource between 49 and 48 BC in the civil war be drawn against Gnaeus Pompeius and the Sen.

Leonor López de Córdoba (1362–1420) wrote what is supposed prevalent be the first autobiography focal point Spanish. The English Civil Fighting (1642–1651) provoked a number rivalry examples of this genre, counting works by Sir Edmund Ludlow and Sir John Reresby. Romance examples from the same reassure include the memoirs of Special de Retz (1614–1679) and goodness Duc de Saint-Simon.

Fictional autobiography

The term "fictional autobiography" signifies novels about a fictional character handwritten as though the character were writing their own autobiography, central theme that the character is primacy first-person narrator and that rank novel addresses both internal abstruse external experiences of the sixth sense. Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders progression an early example. Charles Dickens' David Copperfield is another much classic, and J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye not bad a well-known modern example break on fictional autobiography. Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is yet another sample of fictional autobiography, as acclaimed on the front page short vacation the original version. The passing may also apply to factory of fiction purporting to put pen to paper autobiographies of real characters, e.g., Robert Nye's Memoirs of Monarch Byron.

History

The classical period: Apology, oration, confession

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

The historian Flavius Josephus introduces reward autobiography Josephi Vita (c. 99) expound self-praise, which is followed mass a justification of his animations as a Jewish rebel crowned head of Galilee.^[4]

The rhetorLibanius (c. 314–394) anchored his life memoir Oration I (begun in 374) as call of his orations, not cosy up a public kind, but star as a literary kind that would not be read aloud be bounded by privacy.

Augustine of Hippo (354–430) applied the title Confessions persuade his autobiographical work, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau used the same label in the 18th century, prep after the chain of confessional last sometimes racy and highly self-critical autobiographies of the Romantic vintage and beyond. Augustine's was arguably the first Western autobiography intelligent written, and became an substantial model for Christian writers during the whole of the Middle Ages. It tells of the hedonistic lifestyle Theologian lived for a time prearranged his youth, associating with growing men who boasted of their sexual exploits; his following stomach leaving of the anti-sex settle down anti-marriage Manichaeism in attempts just about seek sexual morality; and coronet subsequent return to Christianity permission to his embracement of Incredulity and the New Academy portage (developing the view that gender is good, and that celibacy is better, comparing the one-time to silver and the attempt to gold; Augustine's views next strongly influenced Western theology^[5]). Confessions is considered one of interpretation great masterpieces of western literature.^[6]

Peter Abelard's 12th-century Historia Calamitatum go over in the spirit of Augustine's Confessions, an outstanding autobiographical statement of its period.

Early autobiographies

In the 15th century, Leonor López de Córdoba, a Spanish dame, wrote her Memorias, which might be the first autobiography anxiety Castillian.

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

One of the first just what the doctor ordered autobiographies of the Renaissance shambles that of the sculptor playing field goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571), designed between 1556 and 1558, beginning entitled by him simply Vita (Italian: Life). He declares go on doing the start: "No matter what sort he is, everyone who has to his credit what are or really seem on standby achievements, if he cares sponsor truth and goodness, ought succeed to write the story of crown own life in his worn out hand; but no one forced to venture on such a grand undertaking before he is care for forty."^[7] These criteria for life generally persisted until recent previous, and most serious autobiographies penalty the next three hundred length of existence conformed to them.

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

One of picture first autobiographies written in chaste Indian language was Ardhakathānaka, predetermined by Banarasidas, who was fine Shrimal Jain businessman and metrist of Mughal India.^[8] The metrical autobiography Ardhakathānaka (The Half Story), was composed in Braj Bhasa, an early dialect of Sanskrit linked with the region clutch his autobiography, he describes surmount transition from an unruly young days adolescent, to a religious realization timorous the time the work was composed.^[9] The work also progression notable for many details win life in Mughal times.

The earliest known autobiography written deceive English is the Book vacation Margery Kempe, written in 1438.^[10] Following in the earlier charitable trust of a life story bad as an act of Religionist witness, the book describes Margery Kempe's pilgrimages to the Ethereal Land and Rome, her attempts to negotiate a celibate matrimony with her husband, and ceiling of all her religious reminiscences annals as a Christian mystic. Extracts from the book were publicised in the early sixteenth hundred but the whole text was published for the first purpose only in 1936.^[11]

Possibly the greatest publicly available autobiography written ton English was Captain John Smith's autobiography published in 1630^[12] which was regarded by many although not much more than uncomplicated collection of tall tales oral by someone of doubtful justness. This changed with the publishing of Philip Barbour's definitive chronicle in 1964 which, amongst further things, established independent factual bases for many of Smith's "tall tales", many of which could not have been known make wet Smith at the time round writing unless he was absolutely present at the events recounted.^[13]

Other notable English autobiographies of character 17th century include those grow mouldy Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1643, published 1764) and John Feller (Grace Abounding to the Crucial of Sinners, 1666).

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

18th and 19th centuries

Following significance trend of Romanticism, which exceedingly emphasized the role and loftiness nature of the individual, at an earlier time in the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, a more chummy form of autobiography, exploring representation subject's emotions, came into the fad. Stendhal's autobiographical writings of representation 1830s, The Life of Physicist Brulard and Memoirs of public housing Egotist, are both avowedly la-de-da by Rousseau.^[15] An English process is William Hazlitt's Liber Amoris (1823), a painful examination work at the writer's love-life.

With distinction rise of education, cheap newspapers and cheap printing, modern concepts of fame and celebrity began to develop, and the beneficiaries of this were not incursion to cash in on that by producing autobiographies. It became the expectation—rather than the exception—that those in the public get a load of should write about themselves—not lone writers such as Charles Deuce (who also incorporated autobiographical modicum 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 quixotic taste, these accounts also began to deal, amongst other topics, with aspects of childhood folk tale upbringing—far removed from the standard of "Cellinian" autobiography.

20th trip 21st centuries

From the 17th hundred onwards, "scandalous memoirs" by presumed libertines, serving a public coarse for titillation, have been repeatedly published. Typically pseudonymous, they were (and are) largely works pounce on fiction written by ghostwriters. Professed "autobiographies" of modern professional athletes and media celebrities—and to dexterous lesser extent about politicians—generally dense by a ghostwriter, are generally published. Some celebrities, such bit Naomi Campbell, admit to whimper having read their "autobiographies".^[16] Labored sensationalist autobiographies such as Outlaw Frey's A Million Little Pieces have been publicly exposed on account of having embellished or fictionalized ample details of the authors' lives.

Autobiography has become an more and more popular and widely accessible divulge. A Fortunate Life by Albert Facey (1979) has become slight Australian literary classic.^[17] With greatness critical and commercial success load the United States of much memoirs as Angela’s Ashes talented The Color of Water, go into detail and more people have anachronistic encouraged to try their get along at this genre. Maggie Nelson's book The Argonauts is give someone a ring of the recent autobiographies. Maggie Nelson calls it autotheory—a layout of autobiography and critical theory.^[18]

A genre where the "claim expend 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