Title: Towards a Poetics of Literary Biography
Description: Drawing upon a wide range of biographies of literary subjects, from Shakespeare and Wordsworth to William Golding and V.S. Naipaul, this book develops a poetics of literary biography based on the triangular relationships of lives, works and times and how narrative operates in holding them together. Biography is seen as a hybrid genre in which historical and fictional elements are imaginatively combined. It considers the roles of story-telling, factual data in the art of life-writing, and the literariness of its language. It includes a case study of the biography of Ellen Terry, discussion of the controversial relationship between a subject's life and works, 'biographical criticism' and, through the issue of gender, the social and cultural changes biographies reflect. It frames a poetics on the basis of its strategy and tactics and demonstrates how the literal truth of verifiable data and the poetic truth of what is narrated are interdependent.
Subjects: Authors, english, English prose literature, history and criticism, Biography as a literary form, Authors, biography, Literature Studies and Criticism, Fiction and Literature, Authors, Biography, Authorship, English Authors, History and criticism, Theory, English prose literature, LITERARY CRITICISM / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory, LITERARY CRITICISM / Books & Reading, LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh