Biography in Theory : : Key Texts with Commentaries / / ed. by Wilhelm Hemecker, Edward Saunders.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Plus DeG Package 2017 Part 1
• MitwirkendeR: Barthes, Roland,; Beer, Gillian,; Bourdieu, Pierre,; Carlyle, Thomas,; Clifford, James,; Dhúill, Caitríona Ní,; Dikovich, Albert,; Dilthey, Wilhelm,; Fetz, Bernhard,; Freud, Sigmund,; Hannesschläger, Vanessa,; Heinrich, Tobias,; Hemecker, Wilhelm,; Herder, Johann Gottfried,; Johnson, Samuel,; Kolkenbrock, Marie,; Kracauer, Siegfried,; Marian, Esther,; Mitterer, Cornelius,; Mittermayer, Manfred,; Nye, David E.,; Prager, Katharina,; Proust, Marcel,; Sartre, Jean-Paul,; Saunders, Edward,; Steedman, Carolyn,; Strachey, Lytton,; Tomashevsky, Boris,; Tretiakov, Sergei,; Turner, Graeme,; Woolf, Virginia,; Zweig, Stefan,; Österle, David,
• HerausgeberIn: Hemecker, Wilhelm,; Saunders, Edward,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2017]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Series: De Gruyter Textbook
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (VIII, 288 p.)

This textbook is an anthology of significant theoretical discussions of biography as a genre and as a literary-historical practice. Covering the 18th to the 21st centuries, the reader includes programmatic texts by authors such as Herder, Carlyle, Dilthey, Proust, Freud, Kracauer, Woolf and Bourdieu. Each text is accompanied by a commentary placing its contribution in critical context. Ideal for use in undergraduate seminars, this reader may also be of interest for academic researchers in the areas of literary studies and history aiming to get an overview of historical questions in biographical theory. This revised and updated English language edition also includes new translations of texts by J. G. Herder and Stefan Zweig, as well as an introductory discussion on the possibility of a ‘theory of biography’. Note: Due to copyright reasons, the chapter "Sade, Fourier, Loyola [Extract] (1971)" (pp. 175–177) by Roland Barthes could not be included in the ebook.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction Theory of Biography or Biography in Theory? -- The Rambler 60 (13 October 1750) -- The Idler 24 (24 November 1759) -- Samuel Johnson’s Advice to Biographers -- Fifth Letter on the Furtherance of Humanity (1793) -- The Living Memory of Biography: Johann Gottfried Herder’s ‘Fifth Letter on the Furtherance of Humanity’ -- On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History [Extract] (1840) -- World History as Heroic Biography: Thomas Carlyle’s ‘Great Men’ -- Plan for the Continuation of the Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences [Extract] [1904–10] -- Between Art and Academia: Wilhelm Dilthey’s Theory of Biography -- The Method of Sainte-Beuve [Extract] [1909] -- Against Biographical Interpretation: Marcel Proust’s Attack on Sainte-Beuve -- Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood [Extract] (1910) -- The Riddles of Sigmund Freud’s Leonardo – Biography, Case History, or …? -- Preface to Eminent Victorians (1918) -- Biography as Exposure: Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians -- Literature and Biography (1923) -- In Search of the Literary Fact: Boris Tomashevsky and the Limits of the Biographical Approach -- The Biography of the Object (1929) -- In the Name of the Collective: Sergei Tretiakov’s Plea for a Biography of the Object -- The Biography as an Art Form of the New Bourgeoisie (1930) -- How to Make Employees Matter: Siegfried Kracauer’s Critique of Biography -- The New Biography (1927) -- The Art of Biography (1939) -- The Biographical Craft: Virginia Woolf’s Contributions to the Theory of Biography -- History as a Poetess (1943) -- Biography between Poetry and History: Stefan Zweig’s ‘History as a Poetess’ -- The Progressive-Regressive Method [Extract] (1957) -- Tracing the ‘projet original’: Jean-Paul Sartre’s Biographical Hermeneutics -- Sade, Fourier, Loyola [Extract] (1971) -- A Life in Memory Fragments: Roland Barthes’s ‘Biographemes’ -- ‘Hanging Up Looking Glasses at Odd Corners’: Ethnobiographical Prospects (1978) -- Provincializing the Biographical Subject: James Clifford’s Manifesto for a ‘Less Centred’ Biography -- Landscape for a Good Woman [Extract] (1986) -- Intersectional Biography: Class, Gender, and Genre in Carolyn Steedman’s Landscape for a Good Woman -- The Biographical Illusion (1986) -- Life as Trajectory: Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘The Biographical Illusion’ (1986) -- Representing Women: Re-presenting the Past [Extract] (1989) -- Things Mean Differently at Different Historical Moments: Re-thinking (Literary) History and Biography -- Post-Thomas Edison (Recalling an Anti-Biography) (2003) -- From ‘Anti-Biography’ to Online Biography? -- Approaching Celebrity Studies [Extract] (2010) -- Biography and Celebrity Studies -- List of Sources -- Editorial Note -- Select Bibliography -- List of Contributors