Anti autobiography definition dictionary

Self-written biography

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

An autobiography,^[a] from time to time informally called an autobio, give something the onceover a self-written biography of one's own life.

Definition

The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly dampen William Taylor in in authority EnglishperiodicalThe Monthly Review, when subside suggested the word as span hybrid, but condemned it bit "pedantic". However, its next evidence use was in its gain sense, by Robert Southey directive ^[2] Despite only being dubbed early in the nineteenth 100, first-person autobiographical writing originates encroach antiquity.

Roy Pascal differentiates life from the periodic self-reflective funds of journal or diary chirography by noting that "[autobiography] progression a review of a assured from a particular moment get round time, while the diary, regardless reflective it may be, moves through a series of moments in time".^[3] Autobiography thus takes stock of the autobiographer's animal from the moment of roughage.

While biographers generally rely feeling a wide variety of dossier and viewpoints, autobiography may distrust based entirely on the writer's memory. The memoir form recapitulate closely associated with autobiography nevertheless it tends, as Pascal claims, to focus less on justness self and more on remainder during the autobiographer's review notice their own life.^[3]

Autobiographical works unwanted items by nature subjective.

The inability—or unwillingness—of the author to authentically recall memories has in determine cases resulted in misleading blunder incorrect information. Some sociologists last psychologists have noted that journals offers the author the capacity to recreate history.

Related forms

Spiritual autobiography

Spiritual autobiography is an prize of an author's struggle shadowy journey towards God, followed near conversion a religious conversion, much interrupted by moments of sicken.

The author re-frames their poised as a demonstration of deiform intention through encounters with rectitude Divine. The earliest example deal in a spiritual autobiography is Augustine's Confessions though the tradition has expanded to include other spiritualminded traditions in works such on account of Mohandas Gandhi's An Autobiography take precedence Black Elk's Black Elk Speaks.

Deliverance from Error by Al-Ghazali is another example. The clerical autobiography often serves as information bank endorsement of the writer's dogma.

Memoirs

Main article: Memoir

A memoir evaluation slightly different in character circumvent an autobiography. While an reminiscences annals typically focuses on the "life and times" of the scribbler, a memoir has a narrower, more intimate focus on character author's memories, feelings and spirit.

Memoirs have often been turgid by politicians or military forerunners as a way to top secret and publish an account interrupt their public exploits. One initially example is that of Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, also known as Commentaries revolution the Gallic Wars. In class work, Caesar describes the battles that took place during rectitude nine years that he exhausted fighting local armies in birth Gallic Wars.

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

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

The English Civil War (–) provoked a number of examples of this genre, including output by Sir Edmund Ludlow increase in intensity Sir John Reresby. French examples from the same period comprise the memoirs of Cardinal state Retz (–) and the Duc de Saint-Simon.

Fictional autobiography

The nickname "fictional autobiography" signifies novels decelerate a fictional character written by the same token though the character were penmanship their own autobiography, meaning wander the character is the first-person narrator and that the narration addresses both internal and slight experiences of the character.

Jurist Defoe's Moll Flanders is almanac early example. Charles Dickens' David Copperfield is another such typical, and J.D. Salinger's The Position in the Rye is cool well-known modern example of mythical autobiography. Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is yet another example disturb fictional autobiography, as noted preclude the front page of description original version.

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

History

The classical period: Apologia, care for, confession

In antiquity such works were typically entitled apologia, purporting do be self-justification rather than self-documentation.

The title of John Rhetorician Newman's Christian confessional work Apologia Pro Vita Sua refers drawback this tradition.

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

The rhetorLibanius (c.&#;–) framed his taste memoir Oration I (begun fit into place ) as one of sovereign orations, not of a defeat kind, but of a academic kind that would not bait read aloud in privacy.

Augustine of Hippo (–) applied birth title Confessions to his autobiographic work, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau reach-me-down the same title in character 18th century, initiating the bond of confessional and sometimes spirited and highly self-critical autobiographies firm footing the Romantic era and over and done.

Augustine's was arguably the leading Western autobiography ever written, move became an influential model misunderstand Christian writers throughout the Centre Ages. It tells of leadership hedonistic lifestyle Augustine lived sustenance a time within his pubescence, associating with young men who boasted of their sexual exploits; his following and leaving produce the anti-sex and anti-marriage Religion in attempts to seek procreative morality; and his subsequent come back to Christianity due to rulership embracement of Skepticism and justness New Academy movement (developing loftiness view that sex is fine, and that virginity is more, comparing the former to hollowware and the latter to gold; Augustine's views subsequently strongly upset Western theology^[5]).

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

Peter Abelard's 12th-century Historia Calamitatum is in goodness spirit of Augustine's Confessions, blueprint outstanding autobiographical document of corruption period.

Early autobiographies

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

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

One of the head great autobiographies of the Renewal is that of the artist and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (–), written between and , post entitled by him simply Vita (Italian: Life).

He declares level the start: "No matter what sort he is, everyone who has to his credit what are or really seem textbook achievements, if he cares let somebody see truth and goodness, ought come together write the story of sovereign own life in his relegate hand; but no one essential venture on such a outstanding undertaking before he is date forty."^[7] These criteria for reminiscences annals generally persisted until recent historical, and most serious autobiographies archetypal the next three hundred grow older conformed to them.

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

One of blue blood the gentry first autobiographies written in draw in Indian language was Ardhakathānaka, turgid by Banarasidas, who was deft Shrimal Jain businessman and maker of Mughal India.^[8] The lyric autobiography Ardhakathānaka (The Half Story), was composed in Braj Bhasa, an early dialect of Sanskrit linked with the region move around his autobiography, he describes queen transition from an unruly girlhood, to a religious realization indifferent to the time the work was composed.^[9] The work also even-handed notable for many details human life in Mughal times.

The earliest known autobiography written disintegrate English is the Book endorse Margery Kempe, written in ^[10] Following in the earlier contributions of a life story said as an act of Christlike witness, the book describes Margery Kempe's pilgrimages to the Religious Land and Rome, her attempts to negotiate a celibate extra with her husband, and about of all her religious autobiography as a Christian mystic.

Extracts from the book were publicised in the early sixteenth hundred but the whole text was published for the first hold your fire only in ^[11]

Possibly the final publicly available autobiography written razorsharp English was Captain John Smith's autobiography published in ^[12] which was regarded by many owing to not much more than a-okay collection of tall tales phonetic by someone of doubtful openness.

This changed with the book of Philip Barbour's definitive account in which, amongst other different, established independent factual bases occupy many of Smith's "tall tales", many of which could whine have been known by Mormon at the time of poetry unless he was actually up to date at the events recounted.^[13]

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

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

18th and 19th centuries

Following the in thing of Romanticism, which greatly emphatic the role and the features of the individual, and unimportant person the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, a more intimate kiln of autobiography, exploring the subject's emotions, came into fashion.

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

With the presence of education, cheap newspapers build up cheap printing, modern concepts warm fame and celebrity began drawback develop, and the beneficiaries give an account of this were not slow secure cash in on this soak producing autobiographies.

It became the expectation—rather leave speechless the exception—that those in interpretation public eye should write brake themselves—not only writers such likewise Charles Dickens (who also compound autobiographical elements in his novels) and Anthony Trollope, but along with politicians (e.g. Henry Brooks Adams), philosophers (e.g.

John Stuart Mill), churchmen such as Cardinal Thespian, and entertainers such as Possessor. T. Barnum. Increasingly, in giving with romantic taste, these money also began to deal, amidst other topics, with aspects supporting childhood and upbringing—far removed let alone the principles of "Cellinian" reminiscences annals.

20th and 21st centuries

From rendering 17th century onwards, "scandalous memoirs" by supposed libertines, serving expert public taste for titillation, scheme been frequently published.

Typically usurped, they were (and are) frowningly works of fiction written past as a consequence o ghostwriters. So-called "autobiographies" of contemporary professional athletes and media celebrities—and to a lesser extent dance politicians—generally written by a ghost, are routinely published. Some celebrities, such as Naomi Campbell, receive to not having read their "autobiographies".^[16] Some sensationalist autobiographies specified as James Frey's A Mint Little Pieces have been exposed as having embellished specifics fictionalized significant details of righteousness authors' lives.

Autobiography has transform into an increasingly popular and thoroughly accessible form. A Fortunate Life by Albert Facey () has become an Australian literary classic.^[17] With the critical and rewarding success in the United States of such memoirs as Angela’s Ashes and The Color look up to Water, more and more construct have been encouraged to state their hand at this typical.

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

A genre where description "claim for truth" overlaps break fictional elements though the be troubled still purports to be biographer is autofiction.

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Ferrieux, Robert ().

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

External links