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Zusatztext An impressive collection of essays! some by well-known practitioners Klappentext Why biography? This collection of essays on the problems and functions of biography, and particularly the biography of writers, thinkers and artists, investigates a subject of enduring importance for those interested in culture and society. In the last century, it has been a controversial subject, as old models of biographical writing were attacked and superseded, while critics and theorists questioned the once self-evident value of the biography of writers. Yet the genre continues to attract notable authors and is unfailingly popular with readers. The present volume, while containing essays by practicing biographers, is intended primarily as a stimulus to critical thinking. It focuses on the diverse functions assumed by life-writing in different European countries at different periods, challenging both the notion of a genre with constant characteristics and aims and the view of modern biography as the happy culmination of centuries of progress. Zusammenfassung Why biography? This collection of essays on the problems and functions of biography, and particularly the biography of writers, thinkers and artists, investigates a subject of enduring importance for those interested in culture and society. In the last century, it has been a controversial subject, as old models of biographical writing were attacked and superseded, while critics and theorists questioned the once self-evident value of the biography of writers. Yet the genre continues to attract notable authors and is unfailingly popular with readers.The present volume, while containing essays by practising biographers, is intended primarily as a stimulus to critical thinking. It focuses on the diverse functions assumed by life-writing in different European countries at different periods, challenging both the notion of a genre with constant characteristics and aims and the view of modern biography as the happy culmination of centuries of progress. Inhaltsverzeichnis The Proper Study? Gender, Biography, and the Public Sphere From Biography to Hagiography: Some Stable Patterns in the Greek and Latin Tradition of Lives, including Lives of the Saints Biography and Autobiography in the Italian Renaissance National Biography and the Arts of Memory: From Thomas Fuller to Colin Matthew From Eulogy to Biography: The French Academic Eloge Adding Stones to the Edifice: Patterns of German Biography Shaping Victorian Biography: From Anecdote to Bildungsroman Sainte-Beuve: Biography, Criticism and the Literary Yury Tynyanov and the 'Literary Fact' Freud and the Art of Biography The Newness of the 'New Biography': Biographical Theory and Practice in the Early Twentieth Century The Biographer as Archaeologist Writing Lives Forwards: A Case for Strictly Chronological Biography Shaping the Truth Sartre's Existential Biographies: A Search for a Method A Life on Film 'The Solace of Doubt'? Biographical Methodology after the Short Twentieth Century ...
