Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Contents
Peripatetic biographical criticism
Recognition of otherness
Connections to other modes of criticism
Assessments of biographical criticism and literary biography
See also
References
External links
Recognition of otherness
Jackson J. Benson describes the form as a "'recognition of 'otherness'—that there is an author who is
different in personality and background from the reader—appears to be a simple-minded proposition. Yet as
a basic prerequisite to the understanding and evaluation of a literary text it is often ignored even by the most
sophisticated literary critics. The exploration of otherness is what literary biography and biographical
criticism can do best, discovering an author as a unique individual, a discovery that puts a burden on us to
reach out to recognize that uniqueness before we can fully comprehend an author's writings.'"[2]
See also
Biography in literature
References
1. "Criticism" (http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/criticism).
2. Benson, Jackson J. (1989). "Steinbeck: A Defense of Biographical Criticism". College
Literature. 16 (2): 107–116. JSTOR 25111810 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/25111810).
3. Knoper, Randall K. (2003). "Walt Whitman and New Biographical Criticism" (https://doi.org/1
0.1353%2Flit.2003.0010). College Literature. 30 (1): 161–168. doi:10.1353/lit.2003.0010 (htt
ps://doi.org/10.1353%2Flit.2003.0010). Project MUSE 39025 (https://muse.jhu.edu/article/39
025).
4. Wilfred L. Guerin, A handbook of critical approaches to literature, Edition 5, 2005, page 51,
57-61; Oxford University Press, University of Michigan
5. Stuart, Duane Reed (1922). "Biographical Criticism of Vergil since the Renaissance".
Studies in Philology. 19 (1): 1–30. JSTOR 4171815 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/4171815).
6. http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/criticism "Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets
(1779–81) was the first thorough-going exercise in biographical criticism, the attempt to
relate a writer's background and life to his works."
7. Lees, Francis Noel (1967) "The Keys Are at the Palace: A Note on Criticism and Biography"
pp. 135-149 In Damon, Philip (editor) (1967) Literary Criticism and Historical Understanding:
Selected Papers from the English Institute Columbia University Press, New York,
OCLC 390148 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/390148)
8. Discussed extensively in Frye, Herman Northrop (1947) Fearful Symmetry: A Study of
William Blake Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, page 326 and following,
OCLC 560970612 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/560970612)
9. Schiffer, James (ed), Shakespeare's Sonnets: Critical Essays (1999),pp. 19-27, 40-43, 45,
47, 395
10. George Alexander Kennedy, The Cambridge history of literary criticism: Classical criticism,
page 205, Cambridge University Press, 1989
11. John Worthen, 'The Necessary Ignorance of a Biographer,' in John Batchelor (ed.) The Art of
Literary Biography, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1995 pp.227-244, p.231
External links
SEGRILLO, Angelo. Confessions of a Biographer: Reflections upon the Theory of Biography
(http://lea.vitis.uspnet.usp.br/arquivos/leaworkingpapersconfessionsofabiographer.pdf). LEA
Working Paper Series, no. 5, March 2019