Modern Western biography has become one of the most popular and most controversial forms of literature. Critics have attacked its tendency to rely on a strong narrative drive, its focus on a single person's life and its tendency to delve ever more deeply into that person's inner, private experience, though these tendencies seem to have only increased biography's popularity. To date, however, biography has been a rarely studied literary form. Little serious attention has been given to the light biographies can shed on philosophical problems, such as the intertwining of knowledge and power, or the ways in which we can understand lives, or terms like 'the self'. Should selves be seen as relational or as autonomous? What of the 'lies and silences' of biographies, the ways in which embodiment can be ignored? A study of these problems allows engagement with a range of philosophers and literary theorists, including Roland Barthes, Lorraine Code, Michel Foucault, Emmanuel Levinas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Ray Monk, Friedrich Nietzsche, Paul Ricoeur, Richard Rorty and Charles Taylor. Biography can be a dangerous art, claiming to know 'just how you feel'. This book explores the double-edged nature of biography, looking at what it reveals about both narratives and selves.
Susan Keating Glaspell (July 1, 1876 – July 27, 1948) was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, actress, director, novelist, biographer, and journalist. A best-selling author in her own time, Glaspell's novels fell out of print after her death, during which time she was remembered primarily for discovering Eugene O'Neil, and for Trifles (1916), a one-act play frequently cited as one of the greatest works of American theater. Critical reassessment has led to renewed interest in her career, and she is today recognized as a pioneering feminist writer and America's first important modern female playwright.
Modern Western biography has become one of the most popular and most controversial forms of literature. Critics have attacked its tendency to rely on a strong narrative drive, its focus on a single person's life and its tendency to delve ever more deeply into that person's inner, private experience, though these tendencies seem to have only increased biography's popularity. To date, however, biography has been a rarely studied literary form. Little serious attention has been given to the light biographies can shed on philosophical problems, such as the intertwining of knowledge and power, or the ways in which we can understand lives, or terms like 'the self'. Should selves be seen as relational or as autonomous? What of the 'lies and silences' of biographies, the ways in which embodiment can be ignored? A study of these problems allows engagement with a range of philosophers and literary theorists, including Roland Barthes, Lorraine Code, Michel Foucault, Emmanuel Levinas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Ray Monk, Friedrich Nietzsche, Paul Ricoeur, Richard Rorty and Charles Taylor. Biography can be a dangerous art, claiming to know 'just how you feel'. This book explores the double-edged nature of biography, looking at what it reveals about both narratives and selves.
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