Autobiography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For writing autobiographies on Wikipedia, see WP:Autobiography
For music albums named Autobiography, see Autobiography (album)

Cover of the first English edition of 1793 of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography
An autobiography, from the Greek autos, 'self', bios, 'life' and graphein, 'write', is a biography written by the subject or composed conjointly with a collaborative writer (styled "as told to" or "with"). The term was first used by the poet Robert Southey in 1809 in the English periodical Quarterly Review, but the form goes back to antiquity. Biographers generally rely on a wide variety of documents and viewpoints; an autobiography however may be based entirely on the writer's memory. Closely associated with autobiography (and sometimes difficult to precisely distinguish from it) is the form of memoir.
See List of autobiographies and Category:Autobiography for examples.
Contents[hide]
1 Nature of autobiography
1.1 The classical period: Apologia, oration, confession
1.2 Early autobiographies
1.3 Memoir
1.4 18th and 19th centuries
2 Versions of the autobiography form
2.1 Sensationalist and celebrity 'autobiographies'
2.2 Autobiographies of the non-famous
2.3 Fictional autobiography
3 Notes
4 References
5 Books about autobiography
6 See also
//

[edit] Nature of autobiography

[edit] The classical period: Apologia, oration, confession
In antiquity such works were typically entitled apologia, implying as much self-justification as self-documentation. John Henry Newman's autobiography (first published in 1864) is entitled Apologia Pro Vita Sua in reference to this tradition.
The pagan rhetor Libanius (c. 314-394) framed his life memoir (Oration I begun in 374) as one of his orations, not of a public kind, but of a literary kind that could be read aloud in privacy.
Augustine (354-430) applied the title Confessions to his autobiographical work, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau used the same title in the 18th century, initiating the chain of confessional and sometimes racy and highly self-critical, autobiographies of the Romantic era and beyond.

[edit] Early autobiographies
One of the first great autobiographies of the Renaissance is that of the sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), written between 1558 and 1556, and entitled by him simply Vita (Italian: Life). He declares at the start: 'No matter what sort he is, everyone who has to his credit what are or really seem great achievements, if he cares for truth and goodness, ought to write the story of his own life in his own hand; but no one should venture on such a splendid undertaking before he is over forty'.[1] These criteria for autobiography generally persisted until recent times, and most serious autobiographies of the next three hundred years conformed to them. Other autobiographies of the period include those of the Italian physician Geronimo Cardano (1574).
The earliest known autobiography in English is the early 15th-century Booke of Margery Kempe, describing among other things her pilgrimage to the Holy Land and visit to Rome. The book remained in manuscript and was not published until 1936.
Notable English autobiographies of the seventeenth century include those of Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1643, published 1764) and John Bunyan (Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinnners, (1666)).

[edit] Memoir
A memoir is slightly different in character from an autobiography. Whilst an autobiography typically focuses on the "life and times" of the writer, a memoir has a narrower, more intimate focus on his or her own memories, feelings and emotions. Memoirs have often been written by politicians or military leaders as a way to record and publish an account of their public exploits. The English Civil War (1642-1651) provoked a number of examples of this genre, including works by Sir Edmund Ludlow and Sir John Reresby. French examples from the same period include the memoirs of Cardinal de Retz (1614-1679) and the Duc de Saint-Simon (1675-1755).
See also Wikipedia article Memoir.

[edit] 18th and 19th centuries

[edit] Versions of the autobiography form

[edit] Sensationalist and celebrity 'autobiographies'
From the seventeenth century onwards, "scandalous memoirs" by supposed libertines, serving a public taste for titillation, have been frequently published. Typically pseudonymous, they were (and are) largely works of fiction written by ghostwriters. A well-known example is Daniel Defoe's 'fictional autobiography' (see below) Moll Flanders.
So-called "autobiographies", generally written by a ghostwriter, are routinely published on the lives of modern professional athletes and media celebrities—and to a lesser extent about politicians. Some celebrities, such as Naomi Campbell, admit to not having read their "autobiographies."

[edit] Autobiographies of the non-famous
By the 1940s, the American James Thurber was able to write of Cellini's strictures of fame and age for autobiographers, 'Nowadays, nobody who has a typewriter pays any attnetion to the old master's quaint rules'. Until recent years, few people without some genuine claim to fame wrote or published autobiographies for the general public. But with the critical and commercial success in the United States of such memoirs as Angela's Ashes and The Color of Water more and more people have been encouraged to try their hand at this genre.

[edit] Fictional autobiography
The term "fictional autobiography" has been coined to define novels about a fictional character written as though the character were writing their own biography, of which Defoe's Moll Flanders, mentioned above, is an early example. J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye is a well-known modern example of a fictional autobiography. The term may also apply to works of fiction purporting to be autobiographies of real characters, e.g. Stephen Marlowe's The Death and Life of Miguel de Cervantes (1996).

[edit] Notes
^ Benvenuto Cellini, tr. George Bull, The Autobiography, London 1966 p. 15

[edit] References
Autobiography in Encyclopaedia Britannica, (1963 edition).

[edit] Books about autobiography
Barros, Carolyn A. "Autobiography: Narrative of Transformation". Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1998.
Buckley, Jerome Hamilton. "The Turning Key: Autobiography and the Subjective Impulse Since 1800". Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.
Lejeune, Philippe, On autobiography, Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 1988.
Olney, James: "Memory & Narrative: The Weave of Life-Writing". Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Pascal, Roy. "Design and Truth in Autobiography". Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960.

[edit] See also
Category:Autobiographies
Alphabiography
Autobiographical songs
Autobiographical novel
Autobiographical comics
Biography
Family history
Historical document
List of autobiographies
Memoir
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobiography"