Towards a Poetics of Literary Biography (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781137549570)

Drawing upon a wide range of biographies of literary subjects, from Shakespeare and Wordsworth to William Golding and V.S. Naipaul, this book develops a poetics of literary biography based on the triangular relationships of lives, works and times and how narrative operates in holding them together. Biography is seen as a hybrid genre in which historical and fictional elements are imaginatively combined. It considers the roles of story-telling, factual data in the art of life-writing, and the literariness of its language. It includes a case study of the biography of Ellen Terry, discussion of the controversial relationship between a subject's life and works, 'biographical criticism' and, through the issue of gender, the social and cultural changes biographies reflect. It frames a poetics on the basis of its strategy and tactics and demonstrates how the literal truth of verifiable data and the poetic truth of what is narrated are interdependent.

Author: Michael Benton
ISBN-10: 1137549572
ISBN-13: 9781137549570
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Language: English
Published: 09/07/2015
Pages: 165
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.78lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.44d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 06/01/2016