Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Biographical Criticism: Jump To Navigationjump To Search
Biographical Criticism: Jump To Navigationjump To Search
Biographical Criticism: Jump To Navigationjump To Search
Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets (1779–81) was possibly the first thorough-going exercise in biographical
criticism.[1]
Biographical criticism is a form of Literary criticism which analyzes a writer's biography to show the
relationship between the author's life and their works of literature.[2][3] Biographical criticism is often
associated with Historical-Biographical criticism,[4] a critical method that "sees a literary work chiefly,
if not exclusively, as a reflection of its author's life and times".[5]
This longstanding critical method dates back at least to the Renaissance period,[6] and was employed
extensively by Samuel Johnson in his Lives of the Poets (1779–81).[7]
Like any critical methodology, biographical criticism can be used with discretion and insight or
employed as a superficial shortcut to understanding the literary work on its own terms through such
strategies as Formalism. Hence 19th century biographical criticism came under disapproval by the
so-called New Critics of the 1920s, who coined the term "biographical fallacy"[8][9] to describe criticism
that neglected the imaginative genesis of literature.
Notwithstanding this critique, biographical criticism remained a significant mode of literary inquiry
throughout the 20th century, particularly in studies of Charles Dickens and F. Scott Fitzgerald,
among others. The method continues to be employed in the study of such authors as John
Steinbeck,[10] Walt Whitman[11] and William Shakespeare.[12]
Contents
[hide]
Recognition of otherness[edit]
Jackson J. Benson describes the form as a "'recognition of 'otherness'—that there is an author who
is different in personality and background from the reader—appears to be a simple-minded
proposition. Yet as a basic prerequisite to the understanding and evaluation of a literary text it is
often ignored even by the most sophisticated literary critics. The exploration of otherness is what
literary biography and biographical criticism can do best, discovering an author as a unique
individual, a discovery that puts a burden on us to reach out to recognize that uniqueness before we
can fully comprehend an author's writings.'"[14]