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.
Sobre o autor
Michael Benton is Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Southampton, UK. His publications include Teaching Literature 9 – 14 (with Geoff Fox) and several anthologies of poetry, notably Touchstones (with Peter Benton). His most recent books are Studies in the Spectator Role: Literature, Painting & Pedagogy (2000) and Literary Biography: An Introduction (2009).
Mais ebooks do mesmo autor(es) / Editor
752.646 Ebooks nesta categoria
