Biography

Characteristics

A biography develops a complex analysis of the personality, including intimate details, experiments and the emotions felt towards the events. The biographical kind is the construction of an identity, plural identity, fragmented in which the task of the Biographe is of déconstruire to find the singularity of its character. But above all, the biography raises the question of the truth.

One can distinguish two categories of biographies:

the erudite biography (or biography-document), which is limited to the data established and present of the rich and exact results, but often austere and not allowing the author to emphasize his qualities of writing;
the biographical novel , which authorizes the author to benefit from his qualities of writing and its imagination in order to supplement the established facts by fictitious passages, with the detriment however of the rigor and exactitude of the text obtained.

The supports of the biographies are often books: Romance, Encyclopedia S, cartoons, cassettes audios or vidéos, etc.
Nevertheless, since the advent of Internet, they are also frequently available on Web sites accompanied by audio or video recordings.

One can quote among most known those:

women and politicians : Jeanne d' Arc, Napoleon, Stalin, De Gaulle, Hillary Clinton, etc .
of personalities and artists : Madam de Pompadour, Francoise Giroud, Romain Gary, Serge Gainsbourg, etc .
people whose life is considered to be interesting, particular, except standard : Albertine Sarrazin, Chicago May,…

Difficulties

The biography answers constraints of the kind: like the obligation to mention its sources, possible transgressions of the author, and if trangressions there is, reasons of those.

The drafting of a biography poses many problems, and in particular:

the impartiality : that which writes a biography having in general a point of view marked on the person to which its work is devoted, it is necessary for him nevertheless to respect a certain objectivity;
the work of investigator : the drafting of a biography requires a all the more difficult preliminary research as the person in which one is interested remained ignored, or lived at one moved back time;
lack of information : even if the preliminary work of investigation is sufficient, the biographer can encounter a pure and simple absence of information, leaving white in the reconstitution;
work on the History : a character, in particular famous, cannot be studied without referring to his social, geographical fabric, political,…;
the work of writing : the temptation of enjoliver the account and to supplement the factual data contribute to the classification of the text in the kind of the biographical novel, and can become particularly awkward if the additions are aberrant, too many, or too not easily dissociable of the facts;
the risk of conflicts with the described person or her descendants, if they dispute the veracity of the remarks which there are made or the transformation of realities.

Functions for the author

Many factors can push an author to write a biography, among which:

the wish to bring its own interpretation of the events and the actions of the life of the subject;
the desire for being identified with the character described, for even comparing its life with that which one tells, or for even taking it for model;
will to affirm its interest for that which one makes the biography;
need for fighting against the lapse of memory, and temptation to set up as a guard of the memory, while leaving a historical testimony.

Interests for the reader

The leading causes involving somebody with reading a biography are:

the possibility of informing itself on the life of the person described, of course, but also on the contexts geographical and historical;
qualities of writing of the author;
the wish to be identified with the character described, and to draw from its life of the lessons for its own existence.

Origins and evolution

The biographical kind exists since the Antiquité but the term biography exists only since the 17th century. In the old Egypt, the biography exists in the form of obituaries registered on the steles, where is the identity and the actions and achievements of the late one. In the Antiquité gréco-Roman one finds biographies of men famous so that they are used as example, of model to speak in praise of qualities, to show the useful virtues for the community

With the the Middle Ages, one finds Hagiographie S (exemplary life of a Saint).

Modern biography and media

For a few decades already, the many documentary ones have recalled, with the cinema or on television, the life of a personality. The Voice-over proposes, in general, an account of the same type as that of a written biography, accompanied by images of files, visual and sound documentations. The biography can also take the form of a Fiction. Since the end of the 20th century, the media Video, while making it possible the greatest number to reach the audio-visual support, renew the autobiographical form.

Democratization of the biographical fact

Today it seems that each one, celebrates or not, wishes to leave a trace: in the specialized companies testify which flower, proposing to the private individuals to carry out their own biography, to preserve the memory of their life, with a private or public aim. They are “films of life” or “filmed biographies”.

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