Created Lives: The Evolution of Literary Biography

The danger when discussing evolution, in any field, is to imagine that it is a linear process—a teleology. In this paper, I will discuss the developments, and new forms, which have appeared in the genre of literary biography over the past half-century. However, anyone who takes the Times Literary Su...

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Autor principal:	Andrew Otty
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	University of Edinburgh 2006
Materias:	Fine Arts N Language and Literature P
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/bbfcc03649f6498eb78cd1e3afe54cc9
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:bbfcc03649f6498eb78cd1e3afe54cc92021-11-23T09:46:01ZCreated Lives: The Evolution of Literary Biography1749-9771https://doaj.org/article/bbfcc03649f6498eb78cd1e3afe54cc92006-08-01T00:00:00Zhttp://www.forumjournal.org/article/view/565https://doaj.org/toc/1749-9771The danger when discussing evolution, in any field, is to imagine that it is a linear process—a teleology. In this paper, I will discuss the developments, and new forms, which have appeared in the genre of literary biography over the past half-century. However, anyone who takes the Times Literary Supplement or London Review of Books, or who has browsed the shelves of Waterstones—the UK's leading bookseller—recently, will be aware that documentary biography, in a form that has not changed significantly since Boswell's Life of Johnson, remains dominant. We must think in terms of what the palaeontologist Yoel Rak calls the "Star Wars Bar" theory of evolution (McKie 38-67)—that Neanderthals and documentary biographers exist alongside Homo sapiens and New Journalists, until the Darwinian fitness of one or other ceases to be sufficient and that species, or form, becomes extinct.Andrew OttyUniversity of EdinburgharticleFine ArtsNLanguage and LiteraturePENForum (2006)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Fine Arts N Language and Literature P
spellingShingle	Fine Arts N Language and Literature P Andrew Otty Created Lives: The Evolution of Literary Biography
description	The danger when discussing evolution, in any field, is to imagine that it is a linear process—a teleology. In this paper, I will discuss the developments, and new forms, which have appeared in the genre of literary biography over the past half-century. However, anyone who takes the Times Literary Supplement or London Review of Books, or who has browsed the shelves of Waterstones—the UK's leading bookseller—recently, will be aware that documentary biography, in a form that has not changed significantly since Boswell's Life of Johnson, remains dominant. We must think in terms of what the palaeontologist Yoel Rak calls the "Star Wars Bar" theory of evolution (McKie 38-67)—that Neanderthals and documentary biographers exist alongside Homo sapiens and New Journalists, until the Darwinian fitness of one or other ceases to be sufficient and that species, or form, becomes extinct.
format	article
author	Andrew Otty
author_facet	Andrew Otty
author_sort	Andrew Otty
title	Created Lives: The Evolution of Literary Biography
title_short	Created Lives: The Evolution of Literary Biography
title_full	Created Lives: The Evolution of Literary Biography
title_fullStr	Created Lives: The Evolution of Literary Biography
title_full_unstemmed	Created Lives: The Evolution of Literary Biography
title_sort	created lives: the evolution of literary biography
publisher	University of Edinburgh
publishDate	2006
url	https://doaj.org/article/bbfcc03649f6498eb78cd1e3afe54cc9
work_keys_str_mv	AT andrewotty createdlivestheevolutionofliterarybiography
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Created Lives: The Evolution of Literary Biography

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