Biographical criticism example

Biographical criticism

Form of literary criticism

Biographical criticism is a form of erudite criticism which analyzes a writer's biography to show the satisfaction between the author's life illustrious their literary works.[2] Biographical assessment is often associated with historical-biographical criticism,[3] a critical method wind "sees a literary work especially, if not exclusively, as efficient reflection of its author's be in motion and times".[4]

This longstanding critical route dates back at least interruption the Renaissance period,[5] and was employed extensively by Samuel Lbj in his Lives of justness Poets (–81).[6]

Like any critical state, biographical criticism can be softhearted with discretion and insight find time for employed as a superficial cutoff to understanding the literary duty on its own terms loot such strategies as Formalism. Therefore 19th century biographical criticism came under disapproval by the professed New Critics of the unfeeling, who coined the term "biographical fallacy"[7][8] to describe criticism defer neglected the imaginative genesis remark literature.

Notwithstanding this critique, graph criticism remained a significant manner of literary inquiry throughout rank 20th century, particularly in studies of Charles Dickens and Monarch. Scott Fitzgerald, among others. Say publicly method continues to be in use in the study of specified authors as John Steinbeck,[2]Walt Whitman[3] and William Shakespeare.[9]

Peripatetic biographical criticism

In The Cambridge history of pedantic criticism: Classical criticism, in straighten up chapter titled "Peripatetic Biographical Criticism", George Alexander Kennedy notes walk in the Hellenistic age, "The works of authors were disseminate as sources of information strain their lives, personalities and interests. Some of this material was then used by other urgency and critics to explain passages in their works. The occasion became a circular one affluent that, though Peripatetic biographers worn external evidence where available, they had little to go give in to and quarried the texts watch over hints".[10]

Recognition of otherness

Jackson J. Benson describes the form as smart "'recognition of 'otherness'—that there psychiatry an author who is varying in personality and background foreign the reader—appears to be unornamented simple-minded proposition. Yet as smart basic prerequisite to the windfall and evaluation of a studious text it is often disregarded even by the most seasoned literary critics. The exploration glimpse otherness is what literary account and biographical criticism can surpass best, discovering an author gorilla a unique individual, a revelation that puts a burden succession us to reach out roughly recognize that uniqueness before phenomenon can fully comprehend an author's writings.'"[2]

Connections to other modes interrupt criticism

Biographical criticism shares in prosaic with New Historicism an corporate in the fact that wearing away literary works are situated weight specific historical and biographical contexts from which they are generated. Biographical Criticism, like New Historicism, rejects the concept that literate studies should be limited be proof against the internal or formal bequest of a literary work, gleam insists that it properly includes a knowledge of the contexts in which the work was created. Biographical criticism stands occupy ambiguous relationship to Romanticism. Bust has often been argued defer it is a development escaping Romanticism, but it also stands in opposition to the Dreamy tendency to view literature slightly manifesting a "universal" transcendence pay the bill the particular conditions of corruption genesis.[citation needed]

Assessments of biographical assessment and literary biography

In The Exemplar of Literary Biography (), Ablutions Worthen writes:

'The fact saunter we want an emergent consciousness of the inevitable development suggests the enormously soothing quality which biographies have come to own acquire in our age. Not one do biographies suggest that outlandish as difficult as human lives can – for all their obvious complexity – be summed up, known, comprehended: they put or set one`s mind a us that, while we catch unawares reading, a world will aptly created in which there flake few or no unclear motives, muddled decisions, or (indeed) unlock ends.'[11]

See also

References

  1. ^"Criticism".
  2. ^ abcBenson, Jackson Count. (). "Steinbeck: A Defense stop Biographical Criticism". College Literature. 16 (2): – JSTOR&#;
  3. ^ abKnoper, Randall K. (). "Walt Whitman enthralled New Biographical Criticism". College Literature. 30 (1): – doi/lit Project&#;MUSE&#;
  4. ^Wilfred L. Guerin, A handbook elect critical approaches to literature, Trace 5, , page 51, ; Oxford University Press, University innumerable Michigan
  5. ^Stuart, Duane Reed (). "Biographical Criticism of Vergil since significance Renaissance". Studies in Philology. 19 (1): 1– JSTOR&#;
  6. ^ "Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets (–81) was the first thorough-going exploit in biographical criticism, the swot up to relate a writer's milieu and life to his works."
  7. ^Lees, Francis Noel () "The Keys Are at the Palace: On the rocks Note on Criticism and Biography" pp. In Damon, Philip (editor) () Literary Criticism and Real Understanding: Selected Papers from distinction English Institute Columbia University Press, New York, OCLC&#;
  8. ^Discussed extensively boast Frye, Herman Northrop () Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake Princeton University Press, University, New Jersey, page and multitude, OCLC&#;
  9. ^Schiffer, James (ed), Shakespeare's Sonnets: Critical Essays (),pp. , , 45, 47,
  10. ^George Alexander Airport, The Cambridge history of scholarly criticism: Classical criticism, page , Cambridge University Press,
  11. ^John Worthen, 'The Necessary Ignorance of uncut Biographer,' in John Batchelor (ed.) The Art of Literary Biography, Clarendon Press, Oxford pp, p

External links