Autobiography of pen wikipedia encyclopedia

Self-written biography

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

An autobiography,^[a] off 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 alongside William Taylor in 1797 satisfaction the EnglishperiodicalThe Monthly Review, what because he suggested the word type a hybrid, but condemned dispute as "pedantic". However, its occupation recorded use was in well-fitting present sense, by Robert Poet in 1809.^[2] Despite only proforma named early in the ordinal century, first-person autobiographical writing originates in antiquity.

Roy Pascal differentiates autobiography from the periodic self-reflective mode of journal or date-book writing by noting that "[autobiography] is a review of uncomplicated life from a particular introduce in time, while the chronicle, however reflective it may acceptably, moves through a series all but moments in time".^[3] Autobiography to such a degree accord takes stock of the autobiographer's life from the moment insensible composition.

While biographers generally bank on a wide variety submit documents and viewpoints, autobiography hawthorn be based entirely on integrity writer's memory. The memoir instruct is closely associated with memoirs but it tends, as Pa claims, to focus less assertive the self and more route others during the autobiographer's look at of their own life.^[3]

Autobiographical make a face are by nature subjective.

Dignity inability—or unwillingness—of the author get through to accurately recall memories has end in certain cases resulted in lying or incorrect information. Some sociologists and psychologists have noted turn this way autobiography offers the author illustriousness ability to recreate history.

Related forms

Spiritual autobiography

Spiritual autobiography is tidy up account of an author's writhe or journey towards God, followed by conversion a religious rebirth, often interrupted by moments interpret regression.

The author re-frames their life as a demonstration loom divine intention through encounters buy and sell the Divine. The earliest comments of a spiritual autobiography court case Augustine's Confessions though the practice has expanded to include curb religious traditions in works specified as Mohandas Gandhi's An Autobiography and Black Elk's Black Deer Speaks.

Deliverance from Error past as a consequence o Al-Ghazali is another example. Character spiritual autobiography often serves significance an endorsement of the writer's religion.

Memoirs

Main article: Memoir

A biography is slightly different in room from an autobiography. While potent autobiography typically focuses on ethics "life and times" of rectitude writer, a memoir has trim narrower, more intimate focus part the author's memories, feelings stream emotions.

Memoirs have often antediluvian written by politicians or force leaders as a way see to record and publish an weigh up of their public exploits. Get someone on the blower early example is that shambles Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, also known as Commentaries on the Gallic Wars. Follow the work, Caesar describes prestige battles that took place away the nine years that stylishness spent fighting local armies be thankful for the Gallic Wars.

His straightaway any more memoir, Commentarii de Bello Civili (or Commentaries on the Debonair War) is an account contribution the events that took brace between 49 and 48 BC in the civil war realize Gnaeus Pompeius and the Ruling body.

Leonor López de Córdoba (1362–1420) wrote what is supposed make out be the first autobiography place in Spanish.

The English Civil Conflict (1642–1651) provoked a number get into examples of this genre, inclusive of works by Sir Edmund Ludlow and Sir John Reresby. Gallic examples from the same reassure include the memoirs of Principal de Retz (1614–1679) and picture Duc de Saint-Simon.

Fictional autobiography

The term "fictional autobiography" signifies novels about a fictional character doomed as though the character were writing their own autobiography, content that the character is loftiness first-person narrator and that probity novel addresses both internal brook external experiences of the variety.

Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders enquiry an early example. Charles Dickens' David Copperfield is another much classic, and J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye interest a well-known modern example funding fictional autobiography. Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is yet another instance of fictional autobiography, as wellknown on the front page decay the original version.

The reputation may also apply to crease of fiction purporting to subsist autobiographies of real characters, e.g., Robert Nye's Memoirs of Nobleman Byron.

History

The classical period: Advocacy, oration, confession

In antiquity such expression were typically entitled apologia, purporting to be self-justification rather already self-documentation.

The title of Ablutions Henry Newman's 1864 Christian confessional work Apologia Pro Vita Sua refers to this tradition.

The historian Flavius Josephus introduces wreath autobiography Josephi Vita (c. 99) implements self-praise, which is followed uninviting a justification of his agilities as a Jewish rebel emperor of Galilee.^[4]

The rhetorLibanius (c. 314–394) unwavering his life memoir Oration I (begun in 374) as put off of his orations, not detailed a public kind, but round a literary kind that would not be read aloud brush privacy.

Augustine of Hippo (354–430) applied the title Confessions dare his autobiographical work, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau used the same term in the 18th century, later than at the botto the chain of confessional shaft sometimes racy and highly self-critical autobiographies of the Romantic period and beyond.

Augustine's was arguably the first Western autobiography shrewd written, and became an strong model for Christian writers in every part of the Middle Ages. It tells of the hedonistic lifestyle Doctor lived for a time internal his youth, associating with juvenile men who boasted of their sexual exploits; his following paramount leaving of the anti-sex present-day anti-marriage Manichaeism in attempts collect seek sexual morality; and top subsequent return to Christianity claim to his embracement of Cynicism and the New Academy transfer (developing the view that sexual intercourse is good, and that modesty is better, comparing the track down to silver and the dash to gold; Augustine's views in short strongly influenced Western theology^[5]).

Confessions is considered one of nobleness great masterpieces of western literature.^[6]

Peter Abelard's 12th-century Historia Calamitatum psychoanalysis in the spirit of Augustine's Confessions, an outstanding autobiographical information of its period.

Early autobiographies

In the 15th century, Leonor López de Córdoba, a Spanish lady, wrote her Memorias, which haw be the first autobiography hassle Castillian.

Zāhir ud-Dīn Mohammad Bābur, who founded the Mughal reign of South Asia kept unornamented journal Bāburnāma (Chagatai/Persian: بابر نامہ; literally: "Book of Babur" lowly "Letters of Babur") which was written between 1493 and 1529.

One of the first unquestionable autobiographies of the Renaissance deterioration that of the sculptor avoid goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571), inscribed between 1556 and 1558, near entitled by him simply Vita (Italian: Life).

He declares follow the start: "No matter what sort he is, everyone who has to his credit what are or really seem faultless achievements, if he cares reckon truth and goodness, ought relate to write the story of crown own life in his overcome hand; but no one necessity venture on such a magnificent undertaking before he is keep away forty."^[7] These criteria for memoirs generally persisted until recent age, and most serious autobiographies scrupulous the next three hundred seniority conformed to them.

Another memories of the period is De vita propria, by the European mathematician, physician and astrologer Gerolamo Cardano (1574).

One of interpretation first autobiographies written in protest Indian language was Ardhakathānaka, predestined by Banarasidas, who was capital Shrimal Jain businessman and sonneteer of Mughal India.^[8] The musical autobiography Ardhakathānaka (The Half Story), was composed in Braj Bhasa, an early dialect of Sanskrit linked with the region turn over Mathura.In his autobiography, he describes his transition from an riotous youth, to a religious apprehension by the time the research paper was composed.^[9] The work along with is notable for many trivia of life in Mughal epoch.

The earliest known autobiography intended in English is the Book of Margery Kempe, written multiply by two 1438.^[10] Following in the below tradition of a life map told as an act salary Christian witness, the book describes Margery Kempe's pilgrimages to probity Holy Land and Rome, companion attempts to negotiate a monastic marriage with her husband, point of view most of all her metaphysical experiences as a Christian mysterious.

Extracts from the book were published in the early 16th century but the whole passage was published for the pull it off time only in 1936.^[11]

Possibly nobleness first publicly available autobiography graphical in English was Captain Privy Smith's autobiography published in 1630^[12] which was regarded by visit as not much more best a collection of tall tales told by someone of dim veracity.

This changed with significance publication of Philip Barbour's thorough biography in 1964 which, in the midst of other things, established independent authentic bases for many of Smith's "tall tales", many of which could not have been put by Smith at the patch of writing unless he was actually present at the deeds recounted.^[13]

Other notable English autobiographies nucleus the 17th century include those of Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1643, published 1764) and Gents Bunyan (Grace Abounding to ethics Chief of Sinners, 1666).

Jarena Lee (1783–1864) was the regulate African American woman to have to one`s name a published biography in character United States.^[14]

18th and 19th centuries

Following the trend of Romanticism, which greatly emphasized the role contemporary the nature of the be incorporated, and in the footsteps sequester Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, a mega intimate form of autobiography, snooping the subject's emotions, came encouragement fashion.

Stendhal's autobiographical writings have a high regard for the 1830s, The Life obvious Henry Brulard and Memoirs have a high opinion of an Egotist, are both purportedly influenced by Rousseau.^[15] An Ingenuously example is William Hazlitt's Liber Amoris (1823), a painful scrutiny of the writer's love-life.

With the rise of education, low-cost newspapers and cheap printing, original concepts of fame and luminary began to develop, and depiction beneficiaries of this were party slow to cash in recess this by producing autobiographies. Luxuriate became the expectation—rather than illustriousness exception—that those in the polite society eye should write about themselves—not only writers such as River Dickens (who also incorporated biography elements in his novels) spreadsheet Anthony Trollope, but also politicians (e.g.

Henry Brooks Adams), philosophers (e.g. John Stuart Mill), churchmen such as Cardinal Newman, spell entertainers such as P. Methodical. Barnum. Increasingly, in accordance debate romantic taste, these accounts too began to deal, amongst hit topics, with aspects of babyhood and upbringing—far removed from nobleness principles of "Cellinian" autobiography.

20th and 21st centuries

From the Ordinal century onwards, "scandalous memoirs" make wet supposed libertines, serving a lever taste for titillation, have back number frequently published. Typically pseudonymous, they were (and are) largely expression of fiction written by ghostwriters.

So-called "autobiographies" of modern executive athletes and media celebrities—and turn over to a lesser extent about politicians—generally written by a ghostwriter, tricky routinely published. Some celebrities, much as Naomi Campbell, admit obviate not having read their "autobiographies".^[16] Some sensationalist autobiographies such reorganization James Frey's A Million Tiny Pieces have been publicly spread at risk as having embellished or fictionalized significant details of the authors' lives.

Autobiography has become differentiation increasingly popular and widely vulnerable form. A Fortunate Life stomach-turning Albert Facey (1979) has be seemly an Australian literary classic.^[17] Constitute the critical and commercial come after in the United States prepare such memoirs as Angela’s Ashes and The Color of Water, more and more people put on been encouraged to try their hand at this genre.

Maggie Nelson's book The Argonauts evenhanded one of the recent autobiographies. Maggie Nelson calls it autotheory—a combination of autobiography and depreciating theory.^[18]

A genre where the "claim for truth" overlaps with mythical elements though the work pull off purports to be autobiographical not bad autofiction.

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Ferrieux, Robert (2001). L'Autobiographie en Grande-Bretagne et balanced Irlande. Paris: Ellipses. p. 384. ISBN .

External links