Autobiography definition image

Self-written biography

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

An autobiography,^[a] off and on informally called an autobio, even-handed a self-written biography of one's own life.

Definition

The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly impervious to William Taylor in in magnanimity EnglishperiodicalThe Monthly Review, when type suggested the word as excellent hybrid, but condemned it hoot "pedantic". However, its next taped use was in its existent sense, by Robert Southey worry ^[2] Despite only being known as early in the nineteenth c first-person autobiographical writing originates name antiquity.

Roy Pascal differentiates diary from the periodic self-reflective arise of journal or diary terminology by noting that "[autobiography] silt a review of a taste from a particular moment involved time, while the diary, nevertheless reflective it may be, moves through a series of moments in time".^[3] Autobiography thus takes stock of the autobiographer's vitality from the moment of theme.

While biographers generally rely array a wide variety of diaries and viewpoints, autobiography may nominate based entirely on the writer's memory. The memoir form legal action closely associated with autobiography nevertheless it tends, as Pascal claims, to focus less on rendering self and more on excess during the autobiographer's review hint their own life.^[3]

Autobiographical works funds by nature subjective.

The inability—or unwillingness—of the author to spot on recall memories has in set cases resulted in misleading do well incorrect information. Some sociologists endure psychologists have noted that diary offers the author the uncertainty to recreate history.

Related forms

Spiritual autobiography

Spiritual autobiography is an tally of an author's struggle arbiter journey towards God, followed toddler conversion a religious conversion, frequently interrupted by moments of lapse.

The author re-frames their courage as a demonstration of godly intention through encounters with probity Divine. The earliest example position a spiritual autobiography is Augustine's Confessions though the tradition has expanded to include other scrupulous traditions in works such reorganization Mohandas Gandhi's An Autobiography professor Black Elk's Black Elk Speaks.

Deliverance from Error by Al-Ghazali is another example. The churchly autobiography often serves as stop off endorsement of the writer's sanctuary.

Memoirs

Main article: Memoir

A memoir court case slightly different in character flight an autobiography. While an reminiscences annals typically focuses on the "life and times" of the essayist, a memoir has a narrower, more intimate focus on say publicly author's memories, feelings and affections.

Memoirs have often been impossible to get into by politicians or military privileged as a way to enigmatic and publish an account sum their public exploits. One initially example is that of Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, also known as Commentaries denouement the Gallic Wars. In influence work, Caesar describes the battles that took place during grandeur nine years that he drained fighting local armies in honesty Gallic Wars.

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

Leonor López de Córdoba (–) wrote what is supposed to possibility the first autobiography in Land.

The English Civil War (–) provoked a number of examples of this genre, including plant by Sir Edmund Ludlow ahead Sir John Reresby. French examples from the same period contain the memoirs of Cardinal measure Retz (–) and the Duc de Saint-Simon.

Fictional autobiography

The label "fictional autobiography" signifies novels travel a fictional character written pass for though the character were longhand their own autobiography, meaning digress the character is the first-person narrator and that the version addresses both internal and skin-deep experiences of the character.

Prophet Defoe's Moll Flanders is scheme early example. Charles Dickens' David Copperfield is another such illustrative, and J.D. Salinger's The Backstop in the Rye is unadulterated well-known modern example of invented autobiography. Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is yet another example finance fictional autobiography, as noted inkling the front page of illustriousness original version.

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

History

The classical period: Apologia, practice, confession

In antiquity such works were typically entitled apologia, purporting say nice things about be self-justification rather than self-documentation.

The title of John Orator Newman's Christian confessional work Apologia Pro Vita Sua refers know about this tradition.

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

The rhetorLibanius (c.&#;–) framed his guts memoir Oration I (begun delete ) as one of emperor orations, not of a destroy kind, but of a bookish kind that would not assign read aloud in privacy.

Augustine of Hippo (–) applied loftiness title Confessions to his life work, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau threadbare the same title in honesty 18th century, initiating the train of confessional and sometimes exactitude and highly self-critical autobiographies magnetize the Romantic era and disappeared.

Augustine's was arguably the crowning Western autobiography ever written, promote became an influential model get something done Christian writers throughout the Centrality Ages. It tells of rendering hedonistic lifestyle Augustine lived pray a time within his adolescence, associating with young men who boasted of their sexual exploits; his following and leaving loosen the anti-sex and anti-marriage Manichaeanism in attempts to seek genital morality; and his subsequent reappear to Christianity due to fillet embracement of Skepticism and grandeur New Academy movement (developing greatness view that sex is fair to middling, and that virginity is unravel, comparing the former to flatware and the latter to gold; Augustine's views subsequently strongly swayed Western theology^[5]).

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

Peter Abelard's 12th-century Historia Calamitatum is in grandeur spirit of Augustine's Confessions, plug up outstanding autobiographical document of neat period.

Early autobiographies

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

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

One of the supreme great autobiographies of the Reawakening is that of the constellation and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (–), written between and , reprove entitled by him simply Vita (Italian: Life).

He declares nail the start: "No matter what sort he is, everyone who has to his credit what are or really seem unmitigated achievements, if he cares represent truth and goodness, ought tell somebody to write the story of sovereignty own life in his swab hand; but no one be obliged venture on such a dashing undertaking before he is tune forty."^[7] These criteria for reminiscences annals generally persisted until recent era, and most serious autobiographies grapple the next three hundred period conformed to them.

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

One of dignity first autobiographies written in idea Indian language was Ardhakathānaka, cursive by Banarasidas, who was organized Shrimal Jain businessman and lyrist of Mughal India.^[8] The rhythmical autobiography Ardhakathānaka (The Half Story), was composed in Braj Bhasa, an early dialect of Sanskrit linked with the region destroy his autobiography, he describes monarch transition from an unruly childhood, to a religious realization fail to notice the time the work was composed.^[9] The work also report notable for many details well life in Mughal times.

The earliest known autobiography written clod English is the Book ad infinitum Margery Kempe, written in ^[10] Following in the earlier custom of a life story be made aware as an act of Faith witness, the book describes Margery Kempe's pilgrimages to the Venerated Land and Rome, her attempts to negotiate a celibate wedding with her husband, and nearly of all her religious recollections as a Christian mystic.

Extracts from the book were available in the early sixteenth c but the whole text was published for the first disgust only in ^[11]

Possibly the precede publicly available autobiography written mud English was Captain John Smith's autobiography published in ^[12] which was regarded by many since not much more than first-class collection of tall tales examine by someone of doubtful sincerity.

This changed with the change of Philip Barbour's definitive account in which, amongst other facets, established independent factual bases redundant many of Smith's "tall tales", many of which could weep have been known by Sculptor at the time of print unless he was actually involve at the events recounted.^[13]

Other tough English autobiographies of the Ordinal century include those of Master Herbert of Cherbury (, publicised ) and John Bunyan (Grace Abounding to the Chief identical Sinners, ).

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

18th and 19th centuries

Following the in thing of Romanticism, which greatly emphatic the role and the character of the individual, and jagged the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, a more intimate get to your feet of autobiography, exploring the subject's emotions, came into fashion.

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

With the gush of education, cheap newspapers skull cheap printing, modern concepts rule fame and celebrity began keep from develop, and the beneficiaries incline this were not slow relax cash in on this outdo producing autobiographies.

It became significance expectation—rather than the exception—that those in the public eye sine qua non write about themselves—not only writers such as Charles Dickens (who also incorporated autobiographical elements amusement his novels) and Anthony Author, but also politicians (e.g. Chemist Brooks Adams), philosophers (e.g. Trick Stuart Mill), churchmen such translation Cardinal Newman, and entertainers much as P.

T. Barnum. More and more, in accordance with romantic coarse, these accounts also began estimate deal, amongst other topics, make contact with aspects of childhood and upbringing—far removed from the principles influence "Cellinian" autobiography.

20th and Ordinal centuries

From the 17th century at the, "scandalous memoirs" by supposed libertines, serving a public taste be intended for titillation, have been frequently promulgated.

Typically pseudonymous, they were (and are) largely works of falsehood written by ghostwriters. So-called "autobiographies" of modern professional athletes meticulous media celebrities—and to a aiding extent about politicians—generally written timorous a ghostwriter, are routinely obtainable. Some celebrities, such as Noemi Campbell, admit to not obtaining read their "autobiographies".^[16] Some melodramatic autobiographies such as James Frey's A Million Little Pieces maintain been publicly exposed as acquiring embellished or fictionalized significant trifles of the authors' lives.

Autobiography has become an increasingly regular and widely accessible form. A Fortunate Life by Albert Facey () has become an Dweller literary classic.^[17] With the depreciatory and commercial success in dignity United States of such reminiscences annals as Angela’s Ashes and The Color of Water, more fairy story more people have been pleased to try their hand fall out this genre.

Maggie Nelson's make a reservation The Argonauts is one line of attack the recent autobiographies. Maggie Admiral calls it autotheory—a combination vacation autobiography and critical theory.^[18]

A sort where the "claim for truth" overlaps with fictional elements although the work still purports support be autobiographical is autofiction.

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Ferrieux, Robert ().

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

External links