Mapping Lives: The Uses of BiographyPeter France, William St Clair Why biography? This collection of essays on the problems and functions of biography, and particularly the biography of writers, thinkers and artists, investigates a subject of enduring importance for those interested in culture and society. In the last century, it has been a controversial subject, as old models of biographical writing were attacked and superseded, while critics and theorists questioned the once self-evident value of the biography of writers. Yet the genre continues to attract notable authors and is unfailingly popular with readers. The present volume, while containing essays by practising biographers, is intended primarily as a stimulus to critical thinking. It focuses on the diverse functions assumed by life-writing in different European countries at different periods, challenging both the notion of a genre with constant characteristics and aims and the view of modern biography as the happy culmination of centuries of progress. |
Contents
From Biography to Hagiography | 19 |
vi | 24 |
Biography and Autobiography in the Italian Renaissance | 37 |
National Biography and the Arts of Memory | 67 |
The French Academic Eloge | 83 |
Patterns of German Biography | 103 |
Biography Criticism and the Literary | 135 |
Yury Tynyanov and the Literary Fact | 157 |
The Biographer as Archaeologist | 219 |
Writing Lives Forwards | 235 |
Shaping the Truth | 253 |
Sartres Existentialist Biographies | 267 |
A Life on Film | 283 |
Gender Biography and the Public Sphere | 303 |
The Solace of Doubt? | 321 |
Index | 337 |
Other editions - View all
Mapping Lives: The Uses of Biography Peter France,William St. Clair,British Academy Snippet view - 2002 |
Common terms and phrases
A. J. A. Symons Académie Académie Française André Maurois artists autobiography Bildungsroman biog biographer's Boccaccio Bruni Carlyle Carlyle's century chapter character Cicero Classical Colin Matthew contemporary context creative critical cultural Dante death Delorme diaries early edition éloge Eloges English essay eulogy example famous fiction film Flaubert Fontenelle Formalist Freud Froude Fuller genius genre German Godwin Goethe Goethe's hagiography hero human humanist Ibid individual intellectual Joseph Delorme later Latin Leon Edel Leonardo letters life-writing literary fact literature littéraires lives London Lytton Strachey Maurois memory modern moral narrative National Biography novel Oxford Paris Petrarch Plutarch poet poet's poetic poetry political portrait psychoanalysis published Pushkin Quattrocento raphy reader Roman Sainte-Beuve saints Sartre Sartre's sense Strachey's Suetonius Symons theory tradition translation truth Tynyanov Victorian Virginia Woolf viris illustribus Vita vols Wilhelm women words writing written wrote