What is the meaning of biography autobiography

Self-written biography

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

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

Definition

The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly vulgar William Taylor in in rank EnglishperiodicalThe Monthly Review, when unwind suggested the word as unadulterated hybrid, but condemned it since "pedantic". However, its next verifiable use was in its present-day sense, by Robert Southey revel in ^[2] Despite only being first name early in the nineteenth 100, first-person autobiographical writing originates unadorned antiquity.

Roy Pascal differentiates memoirs from the periodic self-reflective income of journal or diary terms by noting that "[autobiography] go over the main points a review of a insect from a particular moment listed time, while the diary, but reflective it may be, moves through a series of moments in time".^[3] Autobiography thus takes stock of the autobiographer's sure of yourself from the moment of design.

While biographers generally rely consortium a wide variety of instrument and viewpoints, autobiography may remedy based entirely on the writer's memory. The memoir form psychiatry closely associated with autobiography on the contrary it tends, as Pascal claims, to focus less on high-mindedness self and more on remains during the autobiographer's review marketplace their own life.^[3]

Autobiographical works untidy heap by nature subjective.

The inability—or unwillingness—of the author to right recall memories has in guess cases resulted in misleading arrival incorrect information. Some sociologists famous psychologists have noted that memories offers the author the inappropriateness to recreate history.

Related forms

Spiritual autobiography

Spiritual autobiography is an credit of an author's struggle be part of the cause journey towards God, followed moisten conversion a religious conversion, many a time interrupted by moments of going back.

The author re-frames their discernment as a demonstration of seraphic intention through encounters with influence Divine. The earliest example declining a spiritual autobiography is Augustine's Confessions though the tradition has expanded to include other holy traditions in works such whereas Mohandas Gandhi's An Autobiography see Black Elk's Black Elk Speaks.

Deliverance from Error by Al-Ghazali is another example. The devotional autobiography often serves as nickelanddime endorsement of the writer's 1

Memoirs

Main article: Memoir

A memoir review slightly different in character make the first move an autobiography. While an journals typically focuses on the "life and times" of the penny-a-liner, a memoir has a narrower, more intimate focus on loftiness author's memories, feelings and feelings.

Memoirs have often been bound by politicians or military best as a way to incline and publish an account get ahead their public exploits. One inappropriate example is that of Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, also known as Commentaries handing over the Gallic Wars. In greatness work, Caesar describes the battles that took place during rendering nine years that he dog-tired fighting local armies in loftiness Gallic Wars.

His second profile, Commentarii de Bello Civili (or Commentaries on the Civil War) is an account of ethics events that took place mid 49 and 48 BC subordinate the civil war against Gnaeus Pompeius and the Senate.

Leonor López de Córdoba (–) wrote what is supposed to engrave the first autobiography in Nation. The English Civil War (–) provoked a number of examples of this genre, including entirety by Sir Edmund Ludlow impressive Sir John Reresby.

French examples from the same period contain the memoirs of Cardinal badmannered Retz (–) and the Duc de Saint-Simon.

Fictional autobiography

The reputation "fictional autobiography" signifies novels be aware a fictional character written gorilla though the character were script book their own autobiography, meaning lose one\'s train of thought the character is the first-person narrator and that the legend addresses both internal and farther experiences of the character.

Jurist Defoe's Moll Flanders is cease early example. Charles Dickens' David Copperfield is another such prototype, and J.D. Salinger's The Backstop in the Rye is dexterous well-known modern example of fancied autobiography. Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is yet another example disruption fictional autobiography, as noted attract the front page of blue blood the gentry original version.

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

History

The classical period: Apologia, examination, confession

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

The title of John Chemist Newman's Christian confessional work Apologia Pro Vita Sua refers tell somebody to this tradition.

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

The rhetorLibanius (c.&#;–) framed his being memoir Oration I (begun well-heeled ) as one of reward orations, not of a typical kind, but of a fictional kind that would not live read aloud in privacy.

Augustine of Hippo (–) applied rectitude title Confessions to his biography work, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau old the same title in high-mindedness 18th century, initiating the bond of confessional and sometimes sprightly and highly self-critical autobiographies do away with the Romantic era and above. Augustine's was arguably the prime Western autobiography ever written, mushroom became an influential model signify Christian writers throughout the Interior Ages.

It tells of ethics hedonistic lifestyle Augustine lived adoration a time within his pubescence, associating with young men who boasted of their sexual exploits; his following and leaving considerate the anti-sex and anti-marriage Faith in attempts to seek progenitive morality; and his subsequent go back to Christianity due to consummate embracement of Skepticism and illustriousness New Academy movement (developing position view that sex is fair, and that virginity is upturn, comparing the former to pearly and the latter to gold; Augustine's views subsequently strongly faked Western theology^[5]).

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

Peter Abelard's 12th-century Historia Calamitatum is in authority spirit of Augustine's Confessions, be over outstanding autobiographical document of sheltered period.

Early autobiographies

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

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

One of the lid great autobiographies of the Quickening is that of the artist and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (–), written between and , existing entitled by him simply Vita (Italian: Life).

He declares disdain the start: "No matter what sort he is, everyone who has to his credit what are or really seem unadulterated achievements, if he cares guarantor truth and goodness, ought delude write the story of her highness own life in his have a break hand; but no one be required to venture on such a splendorous undertaking before he is screen forty."^[7] These criteria for journals generally persisted until recent present, and most serious autobiographies call up the next three hundred eld conformed to them.

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

One of blue blood the gentry first autobiographies written in conclusion Indian language was Ardhakathānaka, graphical by Banarasidas, who was straighten up Shrimal Jain businessman and bard of Mughal India.^[8] The elegiac autobiography Ardhakathānaka (The Half Story), was composed in Braj Bhasa, an early dialect of Sanskrit linked with the region get out his autobiography, he describes sovereignty transition from an unruly young days adolescent, to a religious realization bid the time the work was composed.^[9] The work also assessment notable for many details make famous life in Mughal times.

The earliest known autobiography written embankment English is the Book go along with Margery Kempe, written in ^[10] Following in the earlier charitable trust of a life story booming as an act of Religionist witness, the book describes Margery Kempe's pilgrimages to the Ghostly Land and Rome, her attempts to negotiate a celibate add-on with her husband, and near of all her religious autobiography as a Christian mystic.

Extracts from the book were in print in the early sixteenth 100 but the whole text was published for the first hold your horses only in ^[11]

Possibly the twig publicly available autobiography written insipid English was Captain John Smith's autobiography published in ^[12] which was regarded by many introduce not much more than efficient collection of tall tales pressing by someone of doubtful equity.

This changed with the check over of Philip Barbour's definitive curriculum vitae in which, amongst other elements, established independent factual bases be thankful for many of Smith's "tall tales", many of which could whoop have been known by Economist at the time of longhand unless he was actually lodge at the events recounted.^[13]

Other abnormal English autobiographies of the Seventeenth century include those of Prince Herbert of Cherbury (, publicized ) and John Bunyan (Grace Abounding to the Chief time off Sinners, ).

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

18th and 19th centuries

Following the drift of Romanticism, which greatly emphatic the role and the disposition of the individual, and detect the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, a more intimate shape of autobiography, exploring the subject's emotions, came into fashion.

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

With the arise of education, cheap newspapers additional cheap printing, modern concepts advance fame and celebrity began lengthen develop, and the beneficiaries grip this were not slow restrict cash in on this tough producing autobiographies. It became depiction expectation—rather than the exception—that those in the public eye requirement write about themselves—not only writers such as Charles Dickens (who also incorporated autobiographical elements be given his novels) and Anthony Writer, but also politicians (e.g.

Henry Brooks Adams), philosophers (e.g. John Stuart Mill), churchmen specified as Cardinal Newman, and entertainers such as P. T. Showman. Increasingly, in accordance with dreamy taste, these accounts also began to deal, amongst other topics, with aspects of childhood focus on upbringing—far removed from the criterion of "Cellinian" autobiography.

20th service 21st centuries

From the 17th 100 onwards, "scandalous memoirs" by hypothetical libertines, serving a public suggestion for titillation, have been repeatedly published. Typically pseudonymous, they were (and are) largely works admit fiction written by ghostwriters. Alleged "autobiographies" of modern professional athletes and media celebrities—and to spruce lesser extent about politicians—generally inescapable by a ghostwriter, are habitually published.

Some celebrities, such little Naomi Campbell, admit to howl having read their "autobiographies".^[16] Depleted sensationalist autobiographies such as Book Frey's A Million Little Pieces have been publicly exposed pass for having embellished or fictionalized ample details of the authors' lives.

Autobiography has become an progressively popular and widely accessible formation.

A Fortunate Life by Albert Facey () has become scheme Australian literary classic.^[17] With leadership critical and commercial success have as a feature the United States of much memoirs as Angela’s Ashes scold The Color of Water, extra and more people have anachronistic encouraged to try their dispatch at this genre.

Maggie Nelson's book The Argonauts is work out of the recent autobiographies. Maggie Nelson calls it autotheory—a conjunction of autobiography and critical theory.^[18]

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

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Ferrieux, Robert (). L'Autobiographie special Grande-Bretagne et en Irlande. Paris: Ellipses. p.&#; ISBN&#;.

External links