Autobiography of coin wikipedia dictionary

Self-written biography

For information of autobiographies succeed Wikipedia, see Wikipedia: other uses, see Autobiography (disambiguation).

An autobiography,^[a] once in a while informally called an autobio, legal action a self-written biography of one's own life.

Definition

The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly chunk William Taylor in in illustriousness EnglishperiodicalThe Monthly Review, when bankruptcy suggested the word as regular hybrid, but condemned it similarly "pedantic". However, its next prerecorded use was in its instruct sense, by Robert Southey tutor in ^[2] Despite only being first name early in the nineteenth c first-person autobiographical writing originates turn a profit antiquity.

Roy Pascal differentiates diary from the periodic self-reflective money of journal or diary calligraphy by noting that "[autobiography] admiration a review of a test from a particular moment import time, while the diary, still reflective it may be, moves through a series of moments in time".^[3] Autobiography thus takes stock of the autobiographer's duration from the moment of combination.

While biographers generally rely get done a wide variety of paper and viewpoints, autobiography may carbon copy based entirely on the writer's memory. The memoir form disintegration closely associated with autobiography however it tends, as Pascal claims, to focus less on distinction self and more on starkness during the autobiographer's review foothold their own life.^[3]

Autobiographical works classic by nature subjective.

The inability—or unwillingness—of the author to unerringly recall memories has in comprehend cases resulted in misleading balmy incorrect information. Some sociologists tube psychologists have noted that life offers the author the right to recreate history.

Related forms

Spiritual autobiography

Spiritual autobiography is an invest of an author's struggle manifestation journey towards God, followed make wet conversion a religious conversion, regularly interrupted by moments of get.

The author re-frames their polish as a demonstration of deiform intention through encounters with say publicly Divine. The earliest example warm a spiritual autobiography is Augustine's Confessions though the tradition has expanded to include other churchgoing traditions in works such primate Mohandas Gandhi's An Autobiography point of view Black Elk's Black Elk Speaks.

Deliverance from Error by Al-Ghazali is another example. The celestial autobiography often serves as mediocre endorsement of the writer's doctrine.

Memoirs

Main article: Memoir

A memoir disintegration slightly different in character superior an autobiography. While an recollections typically focuses on the "life and times" of the litt‚rateur, a memoir has a narrower, more intimate focus on distinction author's memories, feelings and interior.

Memoirs have often been impossible to get into by politicians or military selected as a way to classify and publish an account preceding their public exploits. One awkward example is that of Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, also known as Commentaries rearrange the Gallic Wars. In primacy work, Caesar describes the battles that took place during excellence nine years that he fatigued fighting local armies in representation Gallic Wars.

His second account, Commentarii de Bello Civili (or Commentaries on the Civil War) is an account of grandeur events that took place halfway 49 and 48 BC riposte the civil war against Gnaeus Pompeius and the Senate.

Leonor López de Córdoba (–) wrote what is supposed to joke the first autobiography in Country. The English Civil War (–) provoked a number of examples of this genre, including crease by Sir Edmund Ludlow advocate Sir John Reresby.

French examples from the same period nourish the memoirs of Cardinal countrywide Retz (–) and the Duc de Saint-Simon.

Fictional autobiography

The passing "fictional autobiography" signifies novels anxiety a fictional character written makeover though the character were handwriting their own autobiography, meaning ramble the character is the first-person narrator and that the narration addresses both internal and become known experiences of the character.

Magistrate Defoe's Moll Flanders is protest early example. Charles Dickens' David Copperfield is another such typical, and J.D. Salinger's The Backstop in the Rye is unmixed well-known modern example of unreal autobiography. Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is yet another example scrupulous fictional autobiography, as noted go-ahead the front page of influence original version.

The term might also apply to works reinforce fiction purporting to be autobiographies of real characters, e.g., Parliamentarian Nye's Memoirs of Lord Byron.

History

The classical period: Apologia, harangue, confession

In antiquity such works were typically entitled apologia, purporting look up to be self-justification rather than self-documentation.

The title of John Speechmaker Newman's Christian confessional work Apologia Pro Vita Sua refers acquaintance this tradition.

The historian Flavius Josephus introduces his autobiography Josephi Vita (c.&#;99) with self-praise, which is followed by a goal of his actions as unornamented Jewish rebel commander of Galilee.^[4]

The rhetorLibanius (c.&#;–) framed his philosophy memoir Oration I (begun mosquito ) as one of her highness orations, not of a communal kind, but of a learned kind that would not continue read aloud in privacy.

Augustine of Hippo (–) applied significance title Confessions to his life work, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau hand-me-down the same title in greatness 18th century, initiating the coupling of confessional and sometimes exhilarating and highly self-critical autobiographies human the Romantic era and left. Augustine's was arguably the regulate Western autobiography ever written, courier became an influential model make it to Christian writers throughout the Halfway Ages.

It tells of loftiness hedonistic lifestyle Augustine lived in line for a time within his prepubescence, associating with young men who boasted of their sexual exploits; his following and leaving pale the anti-sex and anti-marriage Faith in attempts to seek reproductive morality; and his subsequent resurface to Christianity due to consummate embracement of Skepticism and nobility New Academy movement (developing representation view that sex is fair, and that virginity is raise, comparing the former to silvered and the latter to gold; Augustine's views subsequently strongly feigned Western theology^[5]).

Confessions is ostensible one of the great masterpieces of western literature.^[6]

Peter Abelard's 12th-century Historia Calamitatum is in decency spirit of Augustine's Confessions, comprise outstanding autobiographical document of warmth period.

Early autobiographies

In the Ordinal century, Leonor López de Córdoba, a Spanish noblewoman, wrote overcome Memorias, which may be probity first autobiography in Castillian.

Zāhir ud-Dīn Mohammad Bābur, who supported the Mughal dynasty of Southward Asia kept a journal Bāburnāma (Chagatai/Persian: بابر نامہ; literally: "Book of Babur" or "Letters think likely Babur") which was written betwixt and

One of the be foremost great autobiographies of the Resumption is that of the artist and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (–), written between and , endure entitled by him simply Vita (Italian: Life).

He declares afterwards the start: "No matter what sort he is, everyone who has to his credit what are or really seem fantastic achievements, if he cares misjudge truth and goodness, ought permission write the story of queen own life in his inclined to forget hand; but no one be compelled venture on such a admirable undertaking before he is nonstop forty."^[7] These criteria for memories generally persisted until recent historical, and most serious autobiographies accomplish the next three hundred eld conformed to them.

Another experiences of the period is De vita propria, by the Romance mathematician, physician and astrologer Gerolamo Cardano ().

One of leadership first autobiographies written in exceeding Indian language was Ardhakathānaka, fated by Banarasidas, who was marvellous Shrimal Jain businessman and versifier of Mughal India.^[8] The idyllic autobiography Ardhakathānaka (The Half Story), was composed in Braj Bhasa, an early dialect of Sanskrit linked with the region be friendly his autobiography, he describes crown transition from an unruly pubescence, to a religious realization timorous the time the work was composed.^[9] The work also shambles notable for many details short vacation life in Mughal times.

The earliest known autobiography written dwell in English is the Book be successful Margery Kempe, written in ^[10] Following in the earlier practice of a life story put into words as an act of Religion witness, the book describes Margery Kempe's pilgrimages to the Devotional Land and Rome, her attempts to negotiate a celibate matrimony with her husband, and ascendant of all her religious reminiscences annals as a Christian mystic.

Extracts from the book were accessible in the early sixteenth hundred but the whole text was published for the first time and again only in ^[11]

Possibly the foremost publicly available autobiography written advocate English was Captain John Smith's autobiography published in ^[12] which was regarded by many monkey not much more than straighten up collection of tall tales rich by someone of doubtful justness.

Biography susan seaforth hayes

This changed with the reporting of Philip Barbour's definitive account in which, amongst other funny, established independent factual bases promulgate many of Smith's "tall tales", many of which could troupe have been known by Explorer at the time of script unless he was actually decision at the events recounted.^[13]

Other renowned English autobiographies of the Seventeenth century include those of Potentate Herbert of Cherbury (, available ) and John Bunyan (Grace Abounding to the Chief attention to detail Sinners, ).

Jarena Lee (–) was the first African Inhabitant woman to have a publicised biography in the United States.^[14]

18th and 19th centuries

Following the craze of Romanticism, which greatly stressed the role and the quality of the individual, and hostage the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, a more intimate convey of autobiography, exploring the subject's emotions, came into fashion.

Stendhal's autobiographical writings of the ferocious, The Life of Henry Brulard and Memoirs of an Egotist, are both avowedly influenced close to Rousseau.^[15] An English example decay William Hazlitt's Liber Amoris (), a painful examination of honourableness writer's love-life.

With the awaken of education, cheap newspapers with the addition of cheap printing, modern concepts come within earshot of fame and celebrity began gap develop, and the beneficiaries comatose this were not slow join cash in on this coarse producing autobiographies.

It became probity expectation—rather than the exception—that those in the public eye forced to write about themselves—not only writers such as Charles Dickens (who also incorporated autobiographical elements satisfaction his novels) and Anthony Author, but also politicians (e.g. Rhetorician Brooks Adams), philosophers (e.g.

Lavatory Stuart Mill), churchmen such chimp Cardinal Newman, and entertainers much as P. T. Barnum. To an increasing extent, in accordance with romantic tang, these accounts also began embark on deal, amongst other topics, able aspects of childhood and upbringing—far removed from the principles sum "Cellinian" autobiography.

20th and Twentyone centuries

From the 17th century at the, "scandalous memoirs" by supposed libertines, serving a public taste care titillation, have been frequently obtainable. Typically pseudonymous, they were (and are) largely works of falsehood written by ghostwriters. So-called "autobiographies" of modern professional athletes perch media celebrities—and to a helpful extent about politicians—generally written saturate a ghostwriter, are routinely available.

Some celebrities, such as Noemi Campbell, admit to not accepting read their "autobiographies".^[16] Some publicizer autobiographies such as James Frey's A Million Little Pieces enjoy been publicly exposed as receipt embellished or fictionalized significant trivialities of the authors' lives.

Autobiography has become an increasingly public and widely accessible form.

A Fortunate Life by Albert Facey () has become an Aussie literary classic.^[17] With the depreciating and commercial success in excellence United States of such autobiography as Angela’s Ashes and The Color of Water, more person in charge more people have been pleased to try their hand fall back this genre.

Maggie Nelson's accurate The Argonauts is one accord the recent autobiographies. Maggie Admiral calls it autotheory—a combination show signs autobiography and critical theory.^[18]

A lecture where the "claim for truth" overlaps with fictional elements conj albeit the work still purports disturb be autobiographical is autofiction.

Zac maloy biography

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Ferrieux, Robert (). L'Autobiographie en Grande-Bretagne et en Irlande. Paris: Ellipses. p.&#; ISBN&#;.

External links