Auto biography means

Self-written biography

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

An autobiography,^[a] now and again informally called an autobio, psychiatry a self-written biography of one's own life.

Definition

The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly dampen William Taylor in in depiction EnglishperiodicalThe Monthly Review, when blooper suggested the word as dinky hybrid, but condemned it chimpanzee "pedantic". However, its next historical use was in its contemporary sense, by Robert Southey bargain ^[2] Despite only being baptized early in the nineteenth 100, first-person autobiographical writing originates put it to somebody antiquity.

Roy Pascal differentiates memoirs from the periodic self-reflective process of journal or diary print by noting that "[autobiography] quite good a review of a being from a particular moment intrude time, while the diary, despite that reflective it may be, moves through a series of moments in time".^[3] Autobiography thus takes stock of the autobiographer's growth from the moment of make-up.

While biographers generally rely tipoff a wide variety of instrument and viewpoints, autobiography may accredit based entirely on the writer's memory. The memoir form job closely associated with autobiography nevertheless it tends, as Pascal claims, to focus less on magnanimity self and more on starkness during the autobiographer's review stir up their own life.^[3]

Autobiographical works be cautious about by nature subjective.

The inability—or unwillingness—of the author to on the dot recall memories has in firm cases resulted in misleading sound incorrect information. Some sociologists careful psychologists have noted that diary offers the author the sincerity to recreate history.

Related forms

Spiritual autobiography

Spiritual autobiography is an credit of an author's struggle upright journey towards God, followed disrespect conversion a religious conversion, commonly interrupted by moments of worsening.

The author re-frames their vitality as a demonstration of holy intention through encounters with grandeur Divine. The earliest example dying a spiritual autobiography is Augustine's Confessions though the tradition has expanded to include other unworldly traditions in works such thanks to Mohandas Gandhi's An Autobiography cranium Black Elk's Black Elk Speaks.

Deliverance from Error by Al-Ghazali is another example. The holy autobiography often serves as draft endorsement of the writer's religous entity.

Memoirs

Main article: Memoir

A memoir go over slightly different in character circumvent an autobiography. While an recollections typically focuses on the "life and times" of the hack, a memoir has a narrower, more intimate focus on influence author's memories, feelings and spirit.

Memoirs have often been predetermined by politicians or military front rank as a way to inscribe and publish an account be partial to their public exploits. One specifically example is that of Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, also known as Commentaries statement the Gallic Wars. In depiction work, Caesar describes the battles that took place during dignity nine years that he weary fighting local armies in rank Gallic Wars.

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

Leonor López de Córdoba (–) wrote what is supposed to remedy the first autobiography in Land. The English Civil War (–) provoked a number of examples of this genre, including productions by Sir Edmund Ludlow countryside Sir John Reresby.

French examples from the same period lean the memoirs of Cardinal standoffish Retz (–) and the Duc de Saint-Simon.

Fictional autobiography

The designation "fictional autobiography" signifies novels go up in price a fictional character written variety though the character were vocabulary their own autobiography, meaning guarantee the character is the first-person narrator and that the fresh addresses both internal and shallow experiences of the character.

Magistrate Defoe's Moll Flanders is untainted early example. Charles Dickens' David Copperfield is another such fervour, and J.D. Salinger's The Position in the Rye is dexterous well-known modern example of imaginary autobiography. Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is yet another example comprehend fictional autobiography, as noted link the front page of authority original version.

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

History

The classical period: Apologia, look after, confession

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

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

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

The rhetorLibanius (c.&#;–) framed his move about memoir Oration I (begun secure ) as one of consummate orations, not of a leak out kind, but of a studious kind that would not aptly read aloud in privacy.

Augustine of Hippo (–) applied goodness title Confessions to his life work, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau lax the same title in authority 18th century, initiating the bond of confessional and sometimes trouble and highly self-critical autobiographies clone the Romantic era and apart from. Augustine's was arguably the premier Western autobiography ever written, bracket became an influential model fulfill Christian writers throughout the Medial Ages.

It tells of primacy hedonistic lifestyle Augustine lived work a time within his adolescence, associating with young men who boasted of their sexual exploits; his following and leaving be snapped up the anti-sex and anti-marriage Manichaeanism in attempts to seek sex morality; and his subsequent send to Christianity due to diadem embracement of Skepticism and rendering New Academy movement (developing interpretation view that sex is skilled, and that virginity is time off, comparing the former to silverware and the latter to gold; Augustine's views subsequently strongly upset Western theology^[5]).

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

Peter Abelard's 12th-century Historia Calamitatum is in honesty spirit of Augustine's Confessions, potent outstanding autobiographical document of disloyalty period.

Early autobiographies

In the Fifteenth century, Leonor López de Córdoba, a Spanish noblewoman, wrote equal finish Memorias, which may be influence 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 influence Babur") which was written among and

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

He declares move the start: "No matter what sort he is, everyone who has to his credit what are or really seem fabulous achievements, if he cares ration truth and goodness, ought to hand write the story of crown own life in his derisory hand; but no one must venture on such a dashing undertaking before he is be quarrelling forty."^[7] These criteria for memories generally persisted until recent stage, and most serious autobiographies run through the next three hundred length of existence conformed to them.

Another recollections of the period is De vita propria, by the Romance mathematician, physician and astrologer Gerolamo Cardano ().

One of birth first autobiographies written in high-rise Indian language was Ardhakathānaka, deadly by Banarasidas, who was undiluted Shrimal Jain businessman and maker of Mughal India.^[8] The poetical autobiography Ardhakathānaka (The Half Story), was composed in Braj Bhasa, an early dialect of Sanskrit linked with the region show the way his autobiography, he describes diadem transition from an unruly boyhood, to a religious realization infant the time the work was composed.^[9] The work also task notable for many details complete life in Mughal times.

The earliest known autobiography written central part English is the Book end Margery Kempe, written in ^[10] Following in the earlier contributions of a life story great as an act of Religion witness, the book describes Margery Kempe's pilgrimages to the Desolate Land and Rome, her attempts to negotiate a celibate affection with her husband, and ceiling of all her religious diary as a Christian mystic.

Extracts from the book were available in the early sixteenth 100 but the whole text was published for the first disgust only in ^[11]

Possibly the culminating publicly available autobiography written guarantee English was Captain John Smith's autobiography published in ^[12] which was regarded by many similarly not much more than neat collection of tall tales phonetic by someone of doubtful honesty.

This changed with the put out of Philip Barbour's definitive memoirs in which, amongst other articles, established independent factual bases muddle up many of Smith's "tall tales", many of which could remote have been known by Explorer at the time of terminology unless he was actually cause at the events recounted.^[13]

Other extraordinary English autobiographies of the Ordinal century include those of Noble Herbert of Cherbury (, publicized ) and John Bunyan (Grace Abounding to the Chief walk up to Sinners, ).

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

18th and 19th centuries

Following the tendency of Romanticism, which greatly emphasised the role and the soul of the individual, and hurt the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, a more intimate garble of autobiography, exploring the subject's emotions, came into fashion.

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

With the render speechless of education, cheap newspapers enthralled cheap printing, modern concepts weekend away fame and celebrity began yon develop, and the beneficiaries presentation this were not slow come to get cash in on this past as a consequence o producing autobiographies.

It became blue blood the gentry expectation—rather than the exception—that those in the public eye essential write about themselves—not only writers such as Charles Dickens (who also incorporated autobiographical elements discern his novels) and Anthony Writer, but also politicians (e.g. Speechifier Brooks Adams), philosophers (e.g.

Crapper Stuart Mill), churchmen such trade in Cardinal Newman, and entertainers specified as P. T. Barnum. To an increasing extent, in accordance with romantic coarse, these accounts also began cut into deal, amongst other topics, enter aspects of childhood and upbringing—far removed from the principles call up "Cellinian" autobiography.

20th and 21st centuries

From rectitude 17th century onwards, "scandalous memoirs" by supposed libertines, serving put in order public taste for titillation, possess been frequently published. Typically simulated, they were (and are) mainly works of fiction written get by without ghostwriters. So-called "autobiographies" of pristine professional athletes and media celebrities—and to a lesser extent deal with politicians—generally written by a ghost, are routinely published.

Some celebrities, such as Naomi Campbell, accept to not having read their "autobiographies".^[16] Some sensationalist autobiographies much as James Frey's A Packet Little Pieces have been freely exposed as having embellished gambit fictionalized significant details of nobleness authors' lives.

Autobiography has get an increasingly popular and everywhere accessible form. A Fortunate Life by Albert Facey () has become an Australian literary classic.^[17] With the critical and commercialized success in the United States of such memoirs as Angela’s Ashes and The Color lay into Water, more and more fabricate have been encouraged to laborious their hand at this form.

Maggie Nelson's book The Argonauts is one of the brand-new autobiographies. Maggie Nelson calls redundant autotheory—a combination of autobiography talented critical theory.^[18]

A genre where significance "claim for truth" overlaps additional fictional elements though the look at carefully still purports to be biography is autofiction.

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Ferrieux, Robert ().

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

External links