Towards a Poetics of Literary Biography

Description:

Drawing upon a wide range of biographies of literary subjects, from Shakespeare and Wordsworth to William Golding and V.S. Naipaul, this book develops a poetics of literary biography based on the triangular relationships of lives, works and times and how narrative operates in holding them together. Biography is seen as a hybrid genre in which historical and fictional elements are imaginatively combined. It considers the roles of story-telling, factual data in the art of life-writing, and the literariness of its language. It includes a case study of the biography of Ellen Terry, discussion of the controversial relationship between a subject's life and works, 'biographical criticism' and, through the issue of gender, the social and cultural changes biographies reflect. It frames a poetics on the basis of its strategy and tactics and demonstrates how the literal truth of verifiable data and the poetic truth of what is narrated are interdependent.

subjects: Authors, english,  English prose literature, history and criticism,  Biography as a literary form,  Authors, biography,  Literature Studies and Criticism,  Fiction and Literature,  Authors,  Biography,  Authorship,  English Authors,  History and criticism,  Theory,  English prose literature,  LITERARY CRITICISM / General,  LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory,  LITERARY CRITICISM / Books & Reading,  LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh