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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... narrative that loosely linkedthemtogether and gavean accountof the subject's times. These multivolumelife and times biographies encased their subjectsin piety andeuphemism. By treatingthe marriage ofThomas and JaneCarlyle candidly in ...
... narrative, begun with his pedigree,and ended with hisfuneral.” Thebiographer understands the problem of treadingon the sensibilities ofthe “many who think it an act of pietyto hide the faults or fails oftheir friends, even when they can ...
... narratives of history, which involve a thousand fortunes in the businessof a day,and complicate innumerable incidents ... narrative would not be useful; for not only every man has,in themighty massof the world, great numbers in the same ...
... narrative, begun with his pedigree and endedwith his funeral. *** [10] There are, indeed, some natural reasons why these narratives are often written by such as were not likely to give much instruction or delight, and why most accounts ...
... oftennoless remarkablefor whatthey have suffered thanfor whattheyhave achieved; and volumes have been written onlyto enumerate the miseriesofthe learned, and relate their unhappy lives anduntimely deaths. [4] To these mournful narratives I.
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 | |