Notes on Biography

1. PROSE
Lt. Dr. B. Ajantha Parthasarathi,
Assistant Professor of English &
Associate NCC Officer,
Sri SRNM College, Sattur.
Mobile No: 9566716554
Email ID: ajantha@srnmcollege.ac.in

2. Prose – Latin ‘Prosa’ (Straightforward)
No prescribed style for writing prose
Most simple to the very complex
Non-fiction prose writing:
Biography
Autobiography
Essay

3. Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Of Studies
“STUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability.
Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring;
for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the
judgment, and disposition of business.”
“Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and
writing an exact man.”
“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and
some few to be chewed and digested…”
“Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and
writing an exact man.”
Slide 2

4. John Milton (1608-1674)
Of Education
“Nevertheless, to write now the reforming of education,
though it be one of the greatest and noblest designs that can
be thought on, and for the want whereof this nation
perishes; I had not yet at this time been induced, but by
your earnest entreaties and serious conjurements; as having
my mind for the present half diverted in the pursuance of
some other assertions, the knowledge and the use of which
cannot but be a great furtherance both to the enlargement
of truth, and honest living with much more peace.”
Slide 2

5. Biography
 Greek word
 ‘bios’ – ‘life’
 ‘graphein’ – ‘to write’
John Dryden – “the history of particular
men’s lives”
 2nd half of the 17th Century
 Early Middle Ages - Hagiographies/lives of
saints
 Late Middle Ages – the lives of kings, knights
and soldiers
 Latter half of the Middle Ages
 Plutarch’s Lives – 23 Greeks & 23 Romans in
pairs
 Giovanni Boccaccio’s Dante (c.1355)
 Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte d’ Arthur (1485)

6. Biography – Renaissance
Elizabethan Age – translations of classical
biographies
Humanists of the Renaissance – focused
on secular subjects and wrote about artists
and poets
Important biographies in Renaissance
 Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Painters (1550)
 William Roper’s Life of Sir Thomas More (1626)
 Thomas Cavendish’s Life of Cardinal Wolsey
(1641)
 Influential biography
 Sir Francis Bacon’s History of Henry VII (1622)
(Juxtaposed a psychological analysis of Henry VII
against the Historical context of his reign)

7. Biography – 17th Century
 John Aubrey’s Brief Lives
John Dryden – Biography – first used
“the history of particular men’s lives”
A loose collection of random incidents
lacking the artistic principle of selection
and arrangement

8. Biography(ER) – 18th
Century
Used the tools of the novelist – make their
work readable and interesting
Dr Samuel Johnson – greatest biographer
James Boswell’s The Life of Samuel
Johnson (1791)

9. Biography – 19th Century
Underwent a change
Glossed over the unsavoury aspects of the
subject’s life in order to appear respectable
The prudishness and gentility of the
Victorian Age – responsible for this
change in approach
‘Debunking’ – biographer ruthlessly
dissects his subject (person)
Lytton Strachey Eminent Victorians
(1918)

10. Biography – 20th Century
Focus upon research and objectivity
A highly respectable form and a source of
information

11. Biography – Features
The story of an individual
Highlights her/his personality and
character
A well-written biography brings the
personality of the subjects to life

12. Biographer – Problems
Not lived constantly with her/his subject
to give an accurate picture of the person
Not possible to know his subject
personally
Compress the different facets of a life in all
its complexity
Great skill and discretion is to be exercised
in selecting the events and incidents in the
life of the subject

13. Biographer – Qualities
To be detached from her/his subject and
to reveal only a professional interest
To refrain from attributing a moral or any
other utilitarian motive to his work
To guard against the temptation to
exaggerate the virtues of her/his subject

14. Thank
You