Biographical/Personal Approach

[eyemaker]

My dear friends and fellow Litnetters, I quite need a little of your help. I'm doing a report about that particular approach and am still trying to find a better author and selection to show and analyze as an example. So I need some of your suggestions on who to study using this approach and what literary piece of his will be a perfect example? I think any Western writers will do. (novels, short stories and plays)

thanks!:)

[mal4mac]

Portrait of the Artist by James Joyce. Try reading this along with the first few chapters of Ellmanns biography of Joyce to get a fascinating insight into how 'biography as novel' and 'actual biography' work at the highest level.

[eyemaker]

Joyce was actually on my possible list. Thanks by the way. :)

[mayneverhave]

Obviously someone like Shakespeare would provide less of a pool to dive into.

Perhaps Goethe? Rilke? and on a completely different note, Dante?

[mal4mac]

Yeah, not enough is known about Shakespeare, so how could you compare his biography to his work? Dante is a good idea - the Inferno contains many Italians who were friends/enemies of Dante, and Dante himself is taking the tour of hell, so there is an intimate biographical connection! What level of report are you planning? For a quick report, Mandelbaum's readable translation of the entire Comedy has excellent notes that give a quick one line explanation of who the various people are. For more biographical detail try:

Dante: The Poet, the Political Thinker, the Man by Barbara Reynolds

I borrowed this from the library and read about half of it. I found it *very* thorough on Dante and his political & social situation. Maybe too detailed for me... But it is well written, and Reynold credentials are second to none. I'd have read more if I wasn't straining at the leash to read the actual poem!

If you are shooting for A* why not do both Dante & Joyce! The former was a great influence on the latter, and both were heavily influenced by the RC church, both were exiles, many connections and parallels can be drawn.

[Red-Headed]

both were exiles,

Speaking of which, don't forget Joyce's only play Exiles. Some editions of it have Joyce's own notes about the play in it, they are quite interesting.

[mal4mac]

Ellmann has some very interesting, funny, and disturbing accounts of Joyce's trials and tribulations in trying to stage that play, and others--including a feud with the British embassy in Switzerland due to a minor functionary, moonlighting as an actor, not getting paid properly by Joyce (in his view)... Joyce liked a good fight, especially with the British establishment...

Joyce had incredible chutzpah, which makes for a great biography--for instance, he tried to set up a cinema chain in Ireland while living in penury on the continent. He somehow got others to do the hard work for nothing, arguing that he was the ideas man (Idea: "Dublin has no cinema, it should have a cinema, get Fred to set it up and pocket half the profits... now back to Bloom...")

[Red-Headed]

Ellmann has some very interesting, funny, and disturbing accounts of Joyce's trials and tribulations in trying to stage that play, and others--including a feud with the British embassy in Switzerland due to a minor functionary, moonlighting as an actor, not getting paid properly by Joyce (in his view)... Joyce liked a good fight, especially with the British establishment...

Joyce had incredible chutzpah, which makes for a great biography--for instance, he tried to set up a cinema chain in Ireland while living in penury on the continent. He somehow got others to do the hard work for nothing, arguing that he was the ideas man (Idea: "Dublin has no cinema, it should have a cinema, get Fred to set it up and pocket half the profits... now back to Bloom...")

Yeah, Joyce was a bit of a Jack the Lad I reckon at times. If you want to get a handle on why he was like he was, you should read the biography of his father 'John Stanislaus Joyce' by John Wyse Jackson & Peter Costello.