Autobiography genre definition english

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English—Swedish Swedish—English. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Jack Kerouac. My Struggle series. Tao Lin. Jack London. John Barleycorn. Fitz Hugh Ludlow. Norman Maclean. Somerset Maugham. Henry Miller. Tropic of Cancer. Tropic of Capricorn. Davis Miller. The Tao of Muhammad Ali. Sandy Mitchell. Tim O'Brien. The Things They Carried.

Robert M. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Sylvia Plath. Marcel Proust. In Search of Lost Time [ c ]. Gregory David Roberts. Mona Simpson. Anywhere but Here. Gertrude Stein. The Autobiography of Alice B. Hunter S. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Leo Tolstoy. Denton Welch. This shows the veracity and authenticity that is required of a piece of writing to make it eloquent, persuasive, and convincing.

In her autobiography, The Story of My LifeHelen Keller recounts her first twenty years, beginning with the events of the childhood illness that left her deaf and blind. In this book, Keller mentions prominent historical personalities, such as Alexander Graham Bell, whom she met at the age of six, and with whom she remained friends for several years.

Keller paid a visit to John Greenleaf Whittiera famous American poet, and shared correspondence with other eminent figures, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Mrs. Grover Cleveland. One of the first great autobiographies of the Renaissance is that of the sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini —written between andand entitled by him simply Vita Italian : Life.

He declares at the start: "No matter what sort he is, everyone who has to his credit what are or really seem great achievements, if he cares for truth and goodness, ought to write the story of his own life in his own hand; but no one should venture on such a splendid undertaking before he is over forty. Another autobiography of the period is De vita propriaby the Italian mathematician, physician and astrologer Gerolamo Cardano In his autobiography, he describes his transition from an unruly youth, to a religious autobiography genre definition english by the time the work was composed.

The earliest known autobiography written in English is the Book of Margery Kempewritten in Extracts from the book were published in the early sixteenth century but the whole text was published for the first time only in Possibly the first publicly available autobiography written in English was Captain John Smith's autobiography published in [ 12 ] which was regarded by many as not much more than a collection of tall tales told by someone of doubtful veracity.

Autobiography genre definition english

This changed with the publication of Philip Barbour's definitive biography in which, amongst other things, established independent factual bases for many of Smith's "tall tales", many of which could not have been known by Smith at the time of writing unless he was actually present at the events recounted. Jarena Lee — was the first African American woman to have a published biography in the United States.

Following the trend of Romanticismwhich greatly emphasized the role and the nature of the individual, and in the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau 's Confessionsa more intimate form of autobiography, exploring the subject's emotions, came into fashion. Stendhal 's autobiographical writings of the s, The Life of Henry Brulard and Memoirs of an Egotistare both avowedly influenced by Rousseau.

With the rise of education, cheap newspapers and cheap printing, modern concepts of fame and celebrity began to develop, and the beneficiaries of this were not slow to cash in on this by producing autobiographies. It became the expectation—rather than the exception—that those in the public eye should write about themselves—not only writers such as Charles Dickens who also incorporated autobiographical elements in his novels and Anthony Trollopebut also politicians e.

Henry Brooks Adamsphilosophers e. Increasingly, in accordance with romantic taste, these accounts also began to deal, amongst other topics, with aspects of childhood and upbringing—far removed from the principles of "Cellinian" autobiography. From the 17th century onwards, "scandalous memoirs" by supposed libertinesserving a public taste for titillation, have been frequently published.

Typically pseudonymousthey were and are largely works of fiction written by ghostwriters. So-called "autobiographies" of modern professional athletes and media celebrities—and to a lesser extent about politicians—generally written by a ghostwriter, are routinely published. Some celebrities, such as Naomi Campbelladmit to not having read their "autobiographies".

Autobiography has become an increasingly popular and widely accessible form. Maggie Nelson 's book The Argonauts is one of the recent autobiographies. Maggie Nelson calls it autotheory —a combination of autobiography and critical theory.