"The Arc of Biography Theory" by Max Bledstein, Research Fellow

In this blog post, Max Bledstein surveys over 100 years of biography theory to chart shifting critical perceptions of this popular form.

Theorists of biography have gone from being gatekeepers of “truth” intent on pursuing historical fidelity to postmodernists who interrogate the possibility of such a notion. The transition has accompanied an increasing intersection with autobiography and other types of self-life writing, forms which all (including biography) fall under the umbrella term "life narrative,” which Sidonie Smith and Julie Watson describe as “a moving target and an ever-changing practice without absolute rules” (8). The line between self-life writing and biography has become blurred to the point that only twenty of the sixty-seven articles published in Biography (the first academic journal initially dedicated to the study of the titular form) from 2006-2011 focused explicitly on biography, with the rest concentrating on self-life writing forms such as memoir and autobiography (Howes 166). 

Over the course of its history, biographical criticism has addressed questions of truth, the relationship between biographer and subject, biographical ethics and aesthetics, how to tell the stories of women’s lives, and what form a biography can take. In addressing these subjects, biographical criticism has evolved from being a field invested in ideals of objectivity to one reflective of contemporary theoretical developments, such as postmodern ideas of representation and subjectivity.

Biographical theorists’ shifting thoughts on truth epitomize the evolution of the field as a whole, since critics have gone from demanding outright veracity from biographers to understanding that history is too complex to be fully depicted through a singular representation of events. More traditional biographical critics, ranging from Harold Nicolson's early work on the form in the 1920s to Leon Edel’s more modern but still prescriptive criticism in the 1980s, have argued that any instance of fictionalization disqualifies a work from being considered a biography (Edel 16; Nicolson 14). Writing contemporaneously to Edel, Joseph D. Lichtenberg moves the field forward by acknowledging the role of a biographer’s “creatively unique awareness” in the telling of a subject’s life (54).

Subsequent scholars have built on Lichtenberg’s acknowledgement and recognized both the impossibility of providing a full depiction of the past and the importance of context, thereby showing the challenge of depicting a single life (Moraitis 349; Levi 72; Wilson 167). Thus, more progressive critics ofmany critics in the 1980s and 1990s recognized that biographies must be understood as acts of knowledge creation ideal for depicting the marginalization of others (Epstein 287; Ross 158-9). Whereas the reportage of biography once “seemed hard and certain” and fiction “could be dismissed as ‘make believe,’” boundaries between the two have become less clear (Hamilton 283).

As a result of scholars’ changing views on the possibility and meaning of biographical accuracy, concepts of biographers’ responsibilities to their subjects and history have adapted to reflect the complexity of historical depiction. Initial commentators on biographical ethics, writing in the nineteenth to early twentieth century, have argued that biographers are ethically bound to present historical “facts” without any room for invention (Stanfield 71; Oliphant 99; Maurois 168). In their view, possible methods of invention include techniques such as psychoanalysis, which turns “facts” into “interpretations” (DeVoto 149). Instead of any potential fictionalization, early to mid twentieth century critics have suggested that biographers should narrate lives with as much detail as possible, even if some details tarnish a subject’s character (Gosse 118; Clifford 60; Mendelson 17). However, James Thomas Flexner recognizes that any included details will be tainted by a biographer’s subjectivity, and her only intellectual responsibility is to be transparent about her role (182). Thus, contemporary critics argue that readers must recognize “the egoistic elements of biography” which many ignore (Loriga 90).   

The evolving demands of biographical ethics have engendered a corresponding change in critics’ views on the aesthetics of biography. Although scholars have always acknowledged the role of aesthetics in the biographical process, more modern thinkers consider them to be as inextricable from the form as literary devices in fiction or poetry. Even the earliest, most staid biographical theorists of the nineteenth century have argued that biographies are works of art that meld the history of a subject’s life with a biographer’s artistic prowess (Saintsbury 106). Nevertheless, critics such as Hugh Brogan also restrict the artistic license available to biographers, suggesting that a biographer aiming for artistry merely “rejoices” in the “chains” of the limitations of biographical writing (110). But, where Brogan is prescriptive, present-day scholars such as Lois W. Banner grant biographers more freedom by explaining that a biographer’s artistry influences the depiction of a subject to the extent that “often times the persona created in one biography bears only partial resemblance to that in another” (104).

Aesthetics’ changing importance reflects a comparable shift in scholars’ opinions of the relationship between biographer and subject: biographers have gone from being seen as mere conduits for depictions of people’s lives to subjective artists with an undeniable influence over biographical narrative. Samuel H. Baron argues that authorial subjectivity must be “kept within proper bounds” in order to avoid “distortion” (17). By contrast, other critics have embraced subjectivity as an inexorable part of the biographical process (M. Chute 193; Malone 175; Woolf 127). In a similar spirit, scholars of the late 1970s to 1980s have suggested that biographers should be transparent about their subjectivity and acknowledge its influence (Honan 117; Pletsch 360).

Jack Halberstam explains that a refusal of transparency regarding biographical subjectivity potentially constitutes an act of violence against a subject, particularly a marginalized subject, such as a transgender person (149). Halberstam’s warning about depicting marginalization echoes Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's assertion in her discussion of postcolonial representation that “the intellectual is complicit in the persistent constitution of Other as the Self’s shadow,” an argument which underscores the importance of recognizing authorial perspective (75).

Biographer subjectivity becomes especially crucial in writing the narratives of women, whom feminist biographical scholars, since their initial appearance in the late 1970s to early 1980s, have agreed must be represented through frameworks different from those used to depict men. From the beginning of feminist biographical scholarship, critics have argued that biographies of women must account for gender marginalization in order to provide as complete a depiction as possible of their subjects (Barry 79; Wagner-Martin 29). The creation of such a depiction requires a distance from the language of patriarchy in order to account for the differences in women’s and men’s opportunities in society and how gendered subjects leave historical evidence of themselves (Heilbrun 44; Strouse 118). Bell Gale Chevigny most fervently insists on the specificity of women writing about women, arguing that female biographers make their female subjects into maternal figures (96).

Critics writing in the 1990s have contested Chevigny’s essentialism by suggesting that attendance to the singularity of a female subject must be maintained by not understanding her solely through the lens of her gender (Painter 162; Booth 103). With these feminist techniques in mind, biographers can “deconstruct the monolithic category ‘woman’” and provide “new ways of interrupting or rethinking theory” (O’Brien 128). Feminist scholars have thereby opened up the representational possibilities for biography, paving the way for intersectional approaches to the form.

Thus, biographical methods must adapt to reflect the increasing variety of subjects being depicted, and the variety of media used for contemporary biographical representation provides welcome opportunities for change. Biographical films, often referred to as “biopics,” compensate for their inherently reductive historical view by providing mass audiences with information they may never access otherwise (Custen 18; Bingham 8).

Comics have a similar ability to reach readers, while also going beyond biopics by providing specific mechanisms for depicting radical activists, scientists, and experiences of trauma (Gordon 192; Nayar 163; Rifkind 16; H. Chute 296). New mechanisms are needed for the innovations of modern life such as the internet, which has provided biographers with unprecedented materials for understanding subjects and complicated comprehension of individuality (Podnieks 314; Arthur 301). Increased internet usage has only further facilitated acts of self-representation and thereby encouraged scholarly focus on autobiography rather than biography, a fact reflected in the dominance of articles on autobiography in Biography's Spring 2015 issue on digital life narratives (McNeill and Zuern viii) The modern innovations of life writing move the form into the contemporary moment, giving all life narrators a range of tools to represent our current understanding of how to tell stories of lives.

To cite this blog post in the MLA Style (8th Ed.):

Bledstein, Max. “The Arc of Biography Theory.” Project GraphicBio. Jan. 16 2017,  http://www.projectgraphicbio.com/blog/2017/1/16/the-arc-of-biography-theory-by-max-bledstein-research-fellow.  [your date of access].

Works Cited

Arthur, Paul Longley. “Digital Biography: Capturing Lives Online.” The Routledge Auto | Biography Studies Reader, Edited by Ricia Anne Chansky and Emily Hipchen, Routledge/Taylor & Amp; Francis Group, London, 2016, pp. 300–307.

Banner, Lois W. “Biography and Autobiography: Intermixing the Genres." The Routledge Auto | Biography Studies Reader, Edited by Ricia Anne Chansky and Emily Hipchen, Routledge/Taylor & Amp; Francis Group, London, 2016, pp. 101–107.

Baron, Samuel H. “Psychological Dimensions of the Biographical Process.” Introspection in Biography: The Biographer's Quest for Self-Awareness, Edited by Samuel H. Baron and Carl Pletsch, Analytic Press, Hillsdale, 1985, pp. 1–32.

Barry, Kathleen. “The New Historical Syntheses: Women's Biography.” Journal of Women's History, vol. 1, no. 3, 1990, pp. 75–105. JSTOR [JSTOR], doi:10.1353/jowh.2010.0066.

Bingham, Dennis. Whose Lives Are They Anyway?: The Biopic as Contemporary Film Genre. New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 2010.

Booth, Alison. “Biographical Criticism and the ‘Great' Woman of Letters: The Example of George Eliot and Virginia Woolf.” Contesting the Subject: Essays in the Postmodern Theory and Practice of Biography and Biographical Criticism, Edited by William H Epstein, Purdue University Press, West Lafayette, IN, 1991, pp. 85–108.

Brogan, Hugh. “The Biographer's Chains.” The Troubled Face of Biography, Edited by Eric Homberger and John Charmley, St. Martin's Press, New York, NY, 1988, pp. 104–113.

Chevigny, Bell Gale. “Daughters Writing: Toward a Theory of Women's Biography.” Feminist Studies, vol. 9, no. 1, 1983, p. 79. JSTOR [JSTOR], doi:10.2307/3177684.

Chute, Hillary. “Comics Form and Narrating Lives." The Routledge Auto | Biography Studies Reader, Edited by Ricia Anne Chansky and Emily Hipchen, Routledge/Taylor & Amp; Francis Group, London, 2016, pp. 295–299.

Chute, Marchette. “Getting at the Truth.” Biography as an Art: Selected Criticism 1560-1960, Edited by James L. Clifford, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1962, pp. 190–194.

Clifford, James L. From Puzzles to Portraits: Problems of a Literary Biographer. Chapel Hill, University Of North Carolina, 2011.

Custen, George F. Bio/Pics: How Hollywood Constructed Public History. New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1992.

DeVoto, Bernard. “The Skeptical Biographer."Biography as an Art: Selected Criticism 1560-1960, Edited by James L. Clifford, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1962, pp. 144–150.

Edel, Leon. Writing Lives: Principia Biographica. New York, NY, Norton, 1987.

Epstein, William H. “Recognizing the Life-Text: Towards a Poetics of Biography.” Biography, vol. 6, no. 4, 1983, pp. 283–306. JSTOR [JSTOR], doi:10.1353/bio.2010.0714.

Flexner, James Thomas. “Biography as a Juggler’s Art." Biography as an Art: Selected Criticism 1560-1960, Edited by James L. Clifford, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1962, pp. 178–184.

Gordon, Ian. “Let Us Not Call Them Graphic Novels: Comic Books as Biography and History.” Radical History Review, vol. 2010, no. 106, 2009, pp. 185–192. JSTOR [JSTOR], doi:10.1215/01636545-2009-02

Gosse, Edmund. “The Ethics of Biography." Biography as an Art: Selected Criticism 1560-1960, Edited by James L. Clifford, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1962, pp. 113–119.

Halberstam, Jack/Judith. “Telling Tales: Brandon Teena, Billy Tipton, and Transgender Biography.” The Routledge Auto | Biography Studies Reader, Edited by Ricia Anne Chansky and Emily Hipchen, Routledge/Taylor & Amp; Francis Group, London, 2016, pp. 145–153.

Hamilton, Nigel. Biography: A Brief History. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2009.

Heilbrun, Carolyn G. Writing a Woman's Life. New York, NY, W.W. Norton, 2008.

Honan, Park. “The Theory of Biography.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 13, no. 1, 1979, p. 109-20. JSTOR [JSTOR], doi:10.2307/1344955.

Howes, Craig. “What Are We Turning From? Research and Ideology in Biography and Life Writing.” The Biographical Turn: Lives in History, Edited by Hans Renders et al., Routledge, London, 2016, pp. 165–175.

Levi, Giovanni. "The Uses of Biography.” Theoretical Discussions of Biography: Approaches from History, Microhistory, and Life Writing, Edited by Hans Renders and Binne De Haan, Edwin Mellen Press Ltd, Leiden, 2013, pp. 61–74.

Lichtenberg, Joseph D. “Psychoanalysis and Biography." Introspection in Biography: The Biographer's Quest for Self-Awareness, Edited by Samuel H. Baron and Carl Pletsch, Analytic Press, Hillsdale, 1985, pp. 33–65.

Loriga, Sabrina. "The Role of the Individual in History: Biographical and Historical Writing in the 19th and 20th Century." Theoretical Discussions of Biography: Approaches from History, Microhistory, and Life Writing, Edited by Hans Renders and Binne De Haan, Edwin Mellen Press Ltd, Leiden, 2013, pp. 75–93.

Malone, Dumas. “Biography and History." Biography as an Art: Selected Criticism 1560-1960, Edited by James L. Clifford, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1962, pp. 175–177.

Maurois, Andre. “The Ethics of Biography." Biography as an Art: Selected Criticism 1560-1960, Edited by James L. Clifford, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1962, pp. 162-174.

McNeill, Laurie, and John David Zuern. “Online Lives 2.0: Introduction.” Biography, vol. 38, no. 2, 2015, pp. v-xlvi. JSTOR [JSTOR], doi:10.1353/bio.2015.0012.

Mendelson, Edward. "Authorized Biography and Its Discontents." Studies in Biography, Edited by Daniel Aaron, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1978, pp. 9–26.

Moraitis, George. "The Psychoanalyst's Role in the Biographer's Quest for Self-Awareness." Introspection in Biography: The Biographer's Quest for Self-Awareness, Edited by Samuel H. Baron and Carl Pletsch, Analytic Press, Hillsdale, 1985, pp. 319–354.

Nayar, Pramod K. “Radical Graphics: Martin Luther King, Jr., B. R. Ambedkar, and Comics Auto/Biography.” Biography, vol. 39, no. 2, 2016, pp. 147–171. JSTOR [JSTOR], doi:10.1353/bio.2016.0027.

Nicolson, Harold. The Development of English Biography. London, Hogarth, 1928.

O’Brien, Sharon. “Feminist Theory and Literary Biography." Contesting the Subject: Essays in the Postmodern Theory and Practice of Biography and Biographical Criticism, Edited by William H. Epstein, Purdue University Press, West Lafayette, IN, 1991, pp. 123–134.

Oliphant, Margaret. “The Ethics of Biography." Biography as an Art: Selected Criticism 1560-1960, Edited by James L. Clifford, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1962, pp. 97–102.

Painter, Nell Irvin. “Writing Biographies of Women.” Journal of Women's History, vol. 9, no. 2, 1997, pp. 154–163. JSTOR [JSTOR], doi:10.1353/jowh.2010.0562.

Pletsch, Carl. “Subjectivity and Biography." Introspection in Biography: The Biographer's Quest for Self-Awareness, Edited by Samuel H. Baron and Carl Pletsch, Analytic Press, Hillsdale, 1985, pp. 355–360.

Podnieks, Elizabeth. “Celebrity Bio Blogs: Hagiography, Pathography, and Perez Hilton.” The Routledge Auto | Biography Studies Reader, Edited by Ricia Anne Chansky and Emily Hipchen, Routledge/Taylor & Amp; Francis Group, London, 2016, pp. 308–315.

Rifkind, Candida. “The Seeing Eye of Scientific Graphic Biography.” Biography, vol. 38, no. 1, 2015, pp. 1–22. JSTOR [JSTOR], doi:10.1353/bio.2015.0010.

Ross, Valerie. “Too Close to Home: Repressing Biography, Instituting Authority.” Contesting the Subject: Essays in the Postmodern Theory and Practice of Biography and Biographical Criticism, Edited by William H. Epstein, Purdue University Press, West Lafayette, IN, 1991, pp. 135–166.

Saintsbury, George. “Some Great Biographies." Biography as an Art: Selected Criticism 1560-1960, Edited by James L. Clifford, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1962, pp. 103–106.

Schwehn, Mark R. “Subjectivity and Biography." Introspection in Biography: The Biographer's Quest for Self-Awareness, Edited by Samuel H. Baron and Carl Pletsch, Analytic Press, Hillsdale, 1985, pp. 129–142.

Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, Edited by Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, Columbia University Press, New York, NY, 1994, pp. 66–111.

Stanfield, James Field. "An Essay on the Study and Composition of Biography." Biography as an Art: Selected Criticism 1560-1960, Edited by James L. Clifford, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1962, pp. 60–71.

Strouse, Jean. “Semiprivate Lives." Studies in Biography, Edited by Daniel Aaron, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1978, pp. 113–130.

Wagner-Martin, Linda. Telling Women's Lives: The New Biography. New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1994.

Wilson, Rob. "Producing Selves: The Form of American Biography." Contesting the Subject: Essays in the Postmodern Theory and Practice of Biography and Biographical Criticism, Edited by William H. Epstein, Purdue University Press, West Lafayette, IN, 1991, pp. 167–192.

Woolf, Virginia. “The New Biography." Biography as an Art: Selected Criticism 1560-1960, Edited by James L. Clifford, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1962, pp. 123–125.