Biography: A Brief History

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Biography: A Brief History is a book by Nigel Hamilton, which portrays through historiography the history of biography, showing how biographers have portrayed and interpreted individual lives. Biography: A Brief History looks at the historical evolution of biography from the ancient world to the present, from Epic of Gilgamesh to the most recent American Splendor, from cuneiform to the Internet, from commemoration to deconstruction, and from fiction to fact. Biography: A Brief History looks at famous biographical authors such as Plutarch, Saint Augustine, Sir Walter Raleigh, Samuel Johnson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Lord Byron, Sigmund Freud, Lytton Strachey, Abel Gance, Virginia Woolf, Leni Riefenstahl, Orson Welles, Julian Barnes, Ted Hughes, and Frank McCourt.

[edit] Prologue

Nigel Hamilton defines biography as "our creative and non-fiction output devoted to recording and interpreting real lives." The term biography doesn't include that biographies can be both commentaries, as well as a life story. Biography is integral to Western ideals of individuality and ideals of democracy. Although biography is important, most universities don't have a department devoted to the study of biography, except for University of Hawaii at Manoa.

[edit] Evolutionary biography

Nigel Hamilton believes that biography's most important function is to "contribute to our knowledge, understanding, and reconstruction of past civilizations." Majority of early societies recorded themselves through the "memorialization of distinct individuals." Early societies, such as Ancient Greeks or Ancient Egyptians used poems, songs, drawings, and written verse to record their history. Knowledge is knowing who you are as well as who others were. Biography is also used to guide humans' self-understanding as individuals.

Sagas are long story of heroic achievement, which have involved account or series of incidents. Sagas are early oral versions of biographies. Sagas were told through mnemonic techniques such as alliteration, repetition, rhyme, rhythm, and characterization. Although, Epic of Gilgamesh is written, it is a saga about Gilgamesh's journeys. Epic of Gilgamesh impacts biographical portraiture, even today. Three questions still remain unansered: where does fact end and interpretation begin?, Is biography essentially the chronicle of an individual's life journey?, and It it an art of human portraiture that must for social and psychological constructive reasons capture the essence and distinctiveness of a real individual?

Biography itself the Greek words of life and depiction. D.R. Stuart says biography excludes "historians' point of view and home life." Educated Greeks and Romans were biographers, because they could deliver a eulogy, paint portraits, sculpt busts, and write about significant people of the day and in the past. In ancient times, the only professional biographers were compilers. Plutarch said biography let him "treat history as a mirror", because he could help his own life by looking at others.