Tekcan Rana - The Biographer And The Subject A Study On Biographical Distance - Paperback

Binding: Paperback
Description: A good biography is a well - staged illusion. It creates - on paper - a vivid rounded and immediate sense of lived life. In contrast to purely fictional forms biography writing does not allow total freedom to the biographer in the creative act. Ideally a biography's backbone is formed by accurate historical facts. But its soul lies elsewhere. Since the concern is life something more is needed: Nothing dry cold or dead but a vibrant impression of life that is left in the air after one turns over the last page. But how does a biographer do it? The way a biographer creates a subject is largely dictated by the historical distance between them. There are three types of distance in biographical writing: First where the biographer and the subject personally know one another; second where the biographer is a near contemporary of the subject; and third where biographer and subject are distinctly separated in some cases by hundreds of years. This study explores how some of the most accomplished biographers manage to recreate life" across time and space. She closely examines Samuel Johnson's Life of Mr. Richard Savage James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians Michael Holroyd's Lytton Strachey Park Honan's Jane Austen and Andrew Motion's Keats.
Title: The Biographer And The Subject A Study On Biographical Distance
Author(s): Tekcan Rana
Publisher: Ibidem - Verlag Jessica Haunschild U Christian Schon
Barcode: 9783898219952
Pages: 178 Pages
Publication Date: 3/1/2010
Series: Studies in English Literatures
Category: Literature: History & Criticism