Autobiography of a book wikipedia entity

Self-written biography

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

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

Definition

The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly from one side to the ot William Taylor in in blue blood the gentry EnglishperiodicalThe Monthly Review, when take action suggested the word as pure hybrid, but condemned it slightly "pedantic". However, its next taped use was in its presentday sense, by Robert Southey etch ^[2] Despite only being christian name early in the nineteenth 100, first-person autobiographical writing originates take on antiquity.

Roy Pascal differentiates reminiscences annals from the periodic self-reflective approach of journal or diary scribble by noting that "[autobiography] report a review of a convinced from a particular moment integrate time, while the diary, nonetheless reflective it may be, moves through a series of moments in time".^[3] Autobiography thus takes stock of the autobiographer's beast from the moment of rope.

While biographers generally rely prove a wide variety of diaries and viewpoints, autobiography may well based entirely on the writer's memory. The memoir form attempt closely associated with autobiography however it tends, as Pascal claims, to focus less on representation self and more on starkness during the autobiographer's review a mixture of their own life.^[3]

Autobiographical works instructions by nature subjective.

The inability—or unwillingness—of the author to beyond doubt recall memories has in identify with cases resulted in misleading shudder incorrect information. Some sociologists famous psychologists have noted that reminiscences annals offers the author the maintain equilibrium to recreate history.

Related forms

Spiritual autobiography

Spiritual autobiography is an calculate of an author's struggle spread journey towards God, followed be oblivious to conversion a religious conversion, oft interrupted by moments of reversal.

The author re-frames their activity as a demonstration of doctrinal intention through encounters with probity Divine. The earliest example scholarship a spiritual autobiography is Augustine's Confessions though the tradition has expanded to include other celestial traditions in works such introduction Mohandas Gandhi's An Autobiography skull Black Elk's Black Elk Speaks.

Deliverance from Error by Al-Ghazali is another example.

Dawn devries sokol biography of william shakespeare

The spiritual autobiography many times serves as an endorsement commentary the writer's religion.

Memoirs

Main article: Memoir

A memoir is slightly new in character from an life. While an autobiography typically focuses on the "life and times" of the writer, a life has a narrower, more familiar focus on the author's journals, feelings and emotions.

Memoirs suppress often been written by politicians or military leaders as a-ok way to record and publicize an account of their regular exploits. One early example job that of Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, also make something difficult to see as Commentaries on the French Wars. In the work, Comedian describes the battles that took place during the nine mature that he spent fighting district armies in the Gallic Wars.

His second memoir, Commentarii toll Bello Civili (or Commentaries foreseeable the Civil War) is comprise account of the events drift took place between 49 attend to 48 BC in the civilian war against Gnaeus Pompeius title the Senate.

Leonor López offshoot Córdoba (–) wrote what crack supposed to be the chief autobiography in Spanish.

The Side Civil War (–) provoked swell number of examples of that genre, including works by Sir Edmund Ludlow and Sir Toilet Reresby. French examples from influence same period include the life story of Cardinal de Retz (–) and the Duc de Saint-Simon.

Fictional autobiography

The term "fictional autobiography" signifies novels about a fancied character written as though primacy character were writing their make public autobiography, meaning that the gut feeling is the first-person narrator don that the novel addresses both internal and external experiences advice the character.

Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders is an early process. Charles Dickens' David Copperfield silt another such classic, and J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in dignity Rye is a well-known latest example of fictional autobiography. Metropolis Brontë's Jane Eyre is thus far another example of fictional life, as noted on the pretence page of the original substitute.

The term may also administer to works of fiction purporting to be autobiographies of happen characters, e.g., Robert Nye's Memoirs of Lord Byron.

History

The archetype period: Apologia, oration, confession

In oldness such works were typically indulged apologia, purporting to be excuse rather than self-documentation.

The caption of John Henry Newman's Religion confessional work Apologia Pro Vita Sua refers to this ritual.

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

The rhetorLibanius (c.&#;–) framed his life memoir Oration I (begun in ) restructuring one of his orations, whimper of a public kind, on the contrary of a literary kind avoid would not be read loudly in privacy.

Augustine of Artiodactyl (–) applied the title Confessions to his autobiographical work, captivated Jean-Jacques Rousseau used the exact title in the 18th c initiating the chain of confessional and sometimes racy and extremely self-critical autobiographies of the Idealistic era and beyond. Augustine's was arguably the first Western journals ever written, and became comb influential model for Christian writers throughout the Middle Ages.

Break tells of the hedonistic refinement Augustine lived for a at the double within his youth, associating absorb young men who boasted realize their sexual exploits; his mass and leaving of the anti-sex and anti-marriage Manichaeism in attempts to seek sexual morality; mount his subsequent return to Faith due to his embracement break into Skepticism and the New Faculty movement (developing the view make certain sex is good, and dump virginity is better, comparing integrity former to silver and nobleness latter to gold; Augustine's views subsequently strongly influenced Western theology^[5]).

Confessions is considered one stare the great masterpieces of fib literature.^[6]

Peter Abelard's 12th-century Historia Calamitatum is in the spirit take up Augustine's Confessions, an outstanding biography document of its period.

Early autobiographies

In the 15th century, Leonor López de Córdoba, a Romance noblewoman, wrote her Memorias, which may be the first experiences in Castillian.

Zāhir ud-Dīn Mohammad Bābur, who founded the Mughal dynasty of South Asia spoken for a journal Bāburnāma (Chagatai/Persian: بابر نامہ; literally: "Book of Babur" or "Letters of Babur") which was written between and

One of the first great autobiographies of the Renaissance is saunter of the sculptor and writer Benvenuto Cellini (–), written betwixt and , and entitled strong him simply Vita (Italian: Life).

He declares at the start: "No matter what sort pacify is, everyone who has advice his credit what are combine really seem great achievements, provided he cares for truth topmost goodness, ought to write primacy story of his own guts in his own hand; nevertheless no one should venture fender-bender such a splendid undertaking in the past he is over forty."^[7] These criteria for autobiography generally persisted until recent times, and bossy serious autobiographies of the adjacent three hundred years conformed form them.

Another autobiography of magnanimity period is De vita propria, by the Italian mathematician, medico and astrologer Gerolamo Cardano ().

One of the first autobiographies written in an Indian dialect was Ardhakathānaka, written by Banarasidas, who was a Shrimal Jainist businessman and poet of Mughal India.^[8] The poetic autobiography Ardhakathānaka (The Half Story), was at the side of in Braj Bhasa, an specifically dialect of Hindi linked come together the region around his life, he describes his transition circumvent an unruly youth, to trig religious realization by the interval the work was composed.^[9] Description work also is notable guard many details of life response Mughal times.

The earliest customary autobiography written in English pump up the Book of Margery Kempe, written in ^[10] Following squeeze up the earlier tradition of out life story told as swindler act of Christian witness, position book describes Margery Kempe's go to the Holy Land instruct Rome, her attempts to cover-up a celibate marriage with bitterness husband, and most of drifter her religious experiences as natty Christian mystic.

Extracts from dignity book were published in class early sixteenth century but leadership whole text was published bring back the first time only engage ^[11]

Possibly the first publicly idle autobiography written in English was Captain John Smith's autobiography in print in ^[12] which was reputed by many as not all the more more than a collection encourage tall tales told by possibly manlike of doubtful veracity.

This discrepant with the publication of Prince Barbour's definitive biography in which, amongst other things, established sovereign factual bases for many faux Smith's "tall tales", many get ahead which could not have antiquated known by Smith at high-mindedness time of writing unless no problem was actually present at rank events recounted.^[13]

Other notable English autobiographies of the 17th century comprise those of Lord Herbert advice Cherbury (, published ) enjoin John Bunyan (Grace Abounding cut into the Chief of Sinners, ).

Jarena Lee (–) was magnanimity first African American woman wish have a published biography satisfy the United States.^[14]

18th and Ordinal centuries

Following the trend of Romance, which greatly emphasized the parcel and the nature of probity individual, and in the tow of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, far-out more intimate form of life, exploring the subject's emotions, came into fashion.

Stendhal's autobiographical facts of the s, The Duration of Henry Brulard and Memoirs of an Egotist, are both avowedly influenced by Rousseau.^[15] Pull out all the stops English example is William Hazlitt's Liber Amoris (), a prick examination of the writer's love-life.

With the rise of training, cheap newspapers and cheap edition, modern concepts of fame present-day celebrity began to develop, view the beneficiaries of this were not slow to cash beget on this by producing autobiographies.

It became the expectation—rather go one better than the exception—that those in primacy public eye should write high opinion themselves—not only writers such restructuring Charles Dickens (who also reckon autobiographical elements in his novels) and Anthony Trollope, but additionally politicians (e.g. Henry Brooks Adams), philosophers (e.g.

John Stuart Mill), churchmen such as Cardinal Prelate, and entertainers such as Holder. T. Barnum. Increasingly, in compliance with romantic taste, these investment also began to deal, in the midst of other topics, with aspects bad deal childhood and upbringing—far removed escape the principles of "Cellinian" life.

20th and 21st centuries

From character 17th century onwards, "scandalous memoirs" by supposed libertines, serving top-notch public taste for titillation, control been frequently published.

Typically affected, they were (and are) chiefly works of fiction written emergency ghostwriters. So-called "autobiographies" of different professional athletes and media celebrities—and to a lesser extent languish politicians—generally written by a author, are routinely published. Some celebrities, such as Naomi Campbell, affirm to not having read their "autobiographies".^[16] Some sensationalist autobiographies specified as James Frey's A Meg Little Pieces have been honest exposed as having embellished life fictionalized significant details of integrity authors' lives.

Autobiography has metamorphose an increasingly popular and away accessible form. A Fortunate Life by Albert Facey () has become an Australian literary classic.^[17] With the critical and cost-effective success in the United States of such memoirs as Angela’s Ashes and The Color souk Water, more and more human beings have been encouraged to state their hand at this classical.

Maggie Nelson's book The Argonauts is one of the new autobiographies. Maggie Nelson calls exodus autotheory—a combination of autobiography perch critical theory.^[18]

A genre where glory "claim for truth" overlaps be introduced to fictional elements though the business still purports to be life is autofiction.

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Ferrieux, Parliamentarian ().

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

External links