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. |
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... imagination is crucial—thatis, there is adifference between what really happened and what we imagine happened, yet we cannot think or feel without exercisingthe deception ofthe imagination, which is a conceit that wecanbe “excited by ...
... , make their beds and sleep in them. [1] All joy or sorrow for the happiness or calamities of others is produced by an act of the imagination, that realizes the event however fictitious, or approximates it however remote, by placing us,
... imagination. It was the labor of Savage's lifeto broadcast how greatly hesuffered, and Johnson does justice tothat misery, whichhe identifies ina brilliant phrase as arisingfrom his subject's (“gaiety of imagination.” Such a man might ...
... supplythe wantof prudence; and thatnegligence and irregularity, long continued, will makeknowledge useless,wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible. Johnson's direct address tohis audience andhis imagining the reader's state.
A Reader Carl Rollyson. Johnson's direct address tohis audience andhis imagining the reader's state of mind, character, and position inlife, areintriguing. Foreachkind of readerhe hasa word—a warning really—that only by empathizing with ...
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 | |