What Is Biography, & Why is It Important to Art & Literature || Important Aspects OF Biography
What Is Biography:
Word biography comes from Ancient
Greece and means "story of life." While it's true that biography is simply the story of
someone's life, there's much more to it
Biography, in the broadest sense, can
be defined as the written account of a person's life. The most common type of biography is
an autobiography — a personal recollection of events from someone's own life.
This article provides insight into why biography is important to art and literature.
Since
Biography has come to be defined as a critical and artistic tale of another's
life, it has proved itself to be valuable for the purposes of art and
literature. From Ovid to Plutarch to Eneas Sweetland Dallas, biographers have
been praised for the development of their gift of storytelling, which
highlights the necessity and consistent workings of their craft.
Sure, the
craft of biography may be one of the most undervalued forms of writing today.
But that doesn’t make it any less important to art and literature. The idea of
biographical writing has certainly been around for thousands of years, but it
really came into its own during the Renaissance as part of a general historical
trend focusing on human experience – much in the way confessional has taken off
in modern times.
The
biography helps us understand our foundations and origins. It shows us how the
past shapes the present and what our future possibilities are.
Biography is
everywhere. If you watch enough TV, you’re bound to see a biography at some
point. Perhaps it’s a movie about someone’s upbringing or their rise to fame.
Or maybe it goes further and tracks all the meaningful parts of their lives
like their military service or work as an activist group leader during the
civil rights movement.
In
literature, biographies have been written by authors for centuries, even
thousands of years. While most people today picture biographies as being based
on real-life historical figures, that has only been common practice for the
last couple of hundred years. Biographies are often assigned reading in high
school and college English classes, but they’re also read by people who are
fascinated with other people’s lives and want to learn more about them.
Why Biography is
Important to Art & Literature?
There are
many reasons why biography can be important to art, literature, and film.
Biography is
the story of a person's life. Biographies are written by biographers and can be
found in many places including encyclopedias, newspapers, or magazines, on the
internet, and in books. Although most biographies are accurate, some can be
biassed or untrue. Biographers choose who they want to write about based on how
interesting they are and what they have done that is noteworthy.
Why is biography
important?
Many famous
people have had their lives written about by a biographer. These biographies can
help us learn more about their lives and give us information we may not have
known otherwise. It is through biographies that we find out about people who
have lived before us and what it was like for them growing up during different
times. A biography can tell us what someone did with their life, why they did
it, how well they did it, as well as other facts such as where they lived or
what year they were born in!
Biography
helps you understand someone better by giving you more information about their
life than just knowing when and where they were born or died. You get an idea
of what makes them tick: What drives them? What makes them.
Biography is
important not only for writers but also for artists, actors, and musicians.
Biographies are important to art and literature because they put real lives
into perspective, especially when they are written contemporaneously with the
subject's lifetime.
It helps us
understand how people interacted with one another in society on both a personal
and professional level. A biography puts into perspective what the artist or
writer was like as an individual and how this affected their work.
A biography
will give you insight into the artist or writer's thoughts and feelings about
the world around him or her at that time and how those thoughts were manifested
in their work whether it be a painting, book, or song.
As an art
form, biography is as old as literary history. We have examples of biographical
writing from Ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt. More recently, the genre has been
reinvigorated by writers such as Claire Tomalin and Hermione Lee, who have
shown how the lives of women, previously neglected by male biographers, can
illuminate a wider social history.
Biography
has traditionally been the preserve of famous men – politicians,
revolutionaries, scientists, and so on. It is only really in recent decades
that there has been a move towards expanding our understanding of biographical
writing to include less conventional subjects – people from all walks of life
whose stories are worthy of being told. So why read a biography? What are its
benefits?
Biography in art and
literature?
The past is
never simply the past, says Simon Schama. It is always being rewritten to suit
our present needs. He talks to Matthew Sweet about the danger of making history
a morality tale.
In his new
book The Face of Britain, the historian and art critic Simon Schama makes the
case for portrait painting as an expression of the national psyche. But he
expects that people will be surprised by some of his choices. For example, he
includes a group portrait from the early 18th century called The South Sea
Bubble (above), showing a group of investors gathered around a table.
"I want to do more
than just draw beautiful pictures in words," he says. "I'm trying to
tell stories that have a complexity about them."
It's not an
inclination that has always gone down well in Schama's homeland. His BBC
television series A History of Britain was criticized for its political
incorrectness when it was broadcast in 2000, but he sees no reason why British
history can't be both complicated and vivid.
"Britain is full
to overflowing with great stories", he says, "and I've tried to tell
them in ways that are not just going to be well-behaved, but are going to break
out.
Biography
has always had a place in art and literature. It is possible to see Shakespeare's
plays as biographies since he drew on historical sources for his
characterizations. In addition, there are numerous examples of plays, films,
and novels that focus on important figures in history. Yet there is an obvious
difference between a play or novel and what we might call traditional
biography. We do not take Shakespeare's plays seriously as biographies of
Richard III or Henry V because they are works of fiction. Fiction writers may
use real events and make real people the subject of their books, but their
chief concern is with their own artistic creation rather than the historical
truth about their subjects' lives.
Biography
has existed since antiquity. Aristotle observed that poetry and history were
alike in that both had for their subject human beings and the actions they
performed.
Biography is
not just an important part of literature and art, it can actually shape our
relationship with both. It allows us to realize that art is rarely created in a
vacuum. A work of art is the sum of its creator’s experiences and the culture
in which it was formed. Consider how your own life issues have influenced or
been reflected in the works of others.
Art and literature are a reflection of people,
places, events, and cultures across time. If these things are part of your life
on a regular basis, it may help you better understand their importance in
shaping the history we live in today.
so I hope
that you have understood the real meaning of Biography. InshaAllah in the next subsequent article we
read about some person's life.
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