Biography, Autobiography & Memoir

1. Biography, Autobiography & Memoir

2. In the Middle Ages, biographies were either about saints or the glorified accounts of royalty. In Renaissance times, emphasis was on the individual. Writing the history of a particular life was a way of appreciating and keeping record of that individuality. In the Twentieth-century biography, authors have applied psychoanalytical insights in attempting to understand the subject. Biographies through time

3. Biography

4. Autobiographical may take many forms: • Memoirs • Diaries • Letters • The form proper usually involves the interaction of character and external events over a substantial span of a person's life. Autobiographies

5. Autobiography

6. Memoir is a form of autobiography that reduces the author's personal life to the public events in which he or she has participated. • In 371 AD, St. Augustine set the standard in memoir writing by recounting his own personal invisible and internal journey towards salvation…going from sinner to saint. • That changed with Rousseau’s “Confessions” in 1782 where he wrote about a past indiscretion as a way to ease his guilt…a public confession. • Modern memoir-writing is often seen as a kind of therapeutic purge in which the author recounts personal experiences as a form of group therapy. Memoirs

7. Recently, several books originally published as memoirs were later discovered to be works of fiction. • One author said, “The story in the book is mine. It is not the actual reality—it was my reality, my way of surviving.” • A reader said, “Whether her book is true or not, I don’t care.” Memoirs—Is truth important?

8. Memoir

9. Happy reading!