Towards a poetics of literary biography /
"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 toge...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York, NY :
Palgrave Macmillan,
2015.
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| Summary: | "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"-- |
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| Physical Description: | xi, 165 pages ; 23 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781137549570 (hardback) 1137549572 (hardback) |