Towards a Poetics of Literary Biography

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Introduction: Lives Without Theory

   • Michael Benton

   Pages 1-10

3. Art and Artifice in Biography

   • Michael Benton

   Pages 11-31

4. Plotting A Life

   • Michael Benton

   Pages 32-48

5. The Author’s Works (1): Signs of Life?

   • Michael Benton

   Pages 49-73

6. The Author’s Works (2): Open to Criticism?

   • Michael Benton

   Pages 74-90

7. Their Times and Ours

   • Michael Benton

   Pages 91-117

8. Framing a Poetics of Literary Biography

   • Michael Benton

   Pages 118-140

9. Back Matter

   Pages 141-165

   PDF

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.

• bibliography
• biography
• Narrative
• poetics

“Biography is a hybrid form that as a narrative resembles the novel, and as a factual record resembles history. … The strongest sections of the book are devoted to case studies of biographers like Michael Holroyd and Richard Holmes, and to the nature of biography as it has evolved in generations of biographers working on Jane Austen and George Eliot. … Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.” (C. Rollyson, Choice, Vol. 53 (10), June, 2016)

"A polished and focused piece of work, which will make a significant contribution to the literature on life-writing, and in particular biographical writing. The author is at all times judicious and informed in his discussions of both the biographies and of the writers they explore. The writing is lucid and insightful." - Laura Marcus, Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford, UK

• University of Southampton, UK

  Michael Benton

Michael Benton is Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Southampton, UK. His publications include Teaching Literature 9 – 14 (with Geoff Fox) and several anthologies of poetry, notably Touchstones (with Peter Benton). His most recent books are Studies in the Spectator Role: Literature, Painting & Pedagogy (2000) and Literary Biography: An Introduction (2009).

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