British Biography: A ReaderiUniverse, 2005 M07 14 - 320 páginas Biography as a literary genre is largely the product of the eighteenth century and of one seminal work, James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). Boswell's innovations revolutionized the genre and made it the target of suppression and censorship. He sought not only to memorialize a great man but also to reveal his flaws. Boswell reported long stretches of Johnson's conversation, noted his mannerisms, and in general gave an intimate picture such as no biography had ever before dared to attempt. After Boswell, there was a retreat from his bolder innovations, which amounted to self-censorship on the biographer's part. When Thomas Carlyle's biographer, James Anthony Froude, braved this trend against truth and allowed his subject's dark side to show, he was vilified in the press. The tensions between discretion and candor have endured in British biography since Froude, a point Carl Rollyson makes in the reviews of contemporary British biographers he includes in British Biography, which also contains Johnson's full-length biography of Richard Savage, excerpts from Boswell's Life of Johnson as well selections from and commentaries on Southey's biography of Nelson, Mrs. Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Bront, and the revolutionary work of Froude and Strachey. |
Dentro del libro
Resultados 1-5 de 27
... [Boswell's Introduction] [Boswell meets Dr. Johnson, 1763] EXCEPT FROM ROBERT SOUTHEY'S LIFE OF NELSON (1808) [The Battle ofTrafalgar] EXCERPTS FROM ELIZABETH GASKELL'S LIFEOF CHARLOTTE BRONTE (1857) Chapter 8 [From Chapter 26] EXCERPT ...
... Boswell's innovations revolutionizedthe genre and made it the target of suppression and censorship.He sought notonly to memorialize a great man but alsoto revealhis flaws. Boswell reported long stretches of Johnson's conversation, noted ...
... Boswell notwithstanding—Froude is the “greatest of all our biographers.” Froude is so because he broke the civil codeby which biographers had lived since Boswell. Then Freud destroyed forever these Victorian panegyricsof the great ...
... .The biographer cannot claimthe absolute authority thatthe novelistcommands. His work remains, in Boswell's apologetic terms, a “presumptuous task.” READINGS My commentary on thereadingsis in italics. ***indicates passages have.
... Boswell's notes and digressions. Heis often anxious to exert his authority by quoting the ancients and other respected authors to supporthis views. Hewanted toimpress his contemporaries, but posterity has no need of somuch buttressing ...
Contenido
READINGS THE RAMBLER NO 60 JOHNSONS LIFE OF SAVAGE 1744 | |
EXCEPT FROM ROBERT SOUTHEYS LIFE OF NELSON | |
EXCERPTS FROM ELIZABETH GASKELLS LIFEOF | |
EXCERPT FROM FROUDES LIFE OF CARLYLE | |
LYTTON STRACHEY EMINENT VICTORIANS 1918 | |
REVIEWS | |
JOHN FOWLES | |