Overview
- Contends that modern biography has its roots in the classical world
- Posits a model of a quartet of biographical archetypes arising from biographers in the classical world
- Examines previously overlooked connections between biographers of the 18th century and onwards, and biographers of the classical world
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Life Writing (PSLW)
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Table of contents (10 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
Marrying life-writing with classical reception, this book examines ancient biography and its impact on subsequent ages. Close readings of ancient texts are framed by an assessment of their influence on the age of the French Revolution and Napoleon, and on the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, of responses to ancient biography of modern critics, and of its visible legacy in art and film. Crucially it asks what modern biographers can learn from their ancient predecessors. Are the challenges involved in life-writing still the same? Have working methods changed, and in what ways? What in the context of biographical writing is truth, and how are its interests best served? How is it possible, now as then, honestly to convey a life?
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Robert Fraser is a biographer, critic and poet. The Chameleon Poet (2001), his biography of George Barker, was Spectator Book of the Year in 2002, and in May 2012 Night Thoughts, his life of David Gascoyne, topped the Independent’s list of Best Ten New Biographies. He has also published books on Marcel Proust (1994) and on the classicist and anthropologist Sir James Frazer (1990), whose magnum opus The Golden Bough he edited in 1994. He has held academic positions in Ghana, Leeds, London, and Trinity College Cambridge, UK. He is Emeritus Professor of Literature in the Open University, UK, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: After Ancient Biography
Book Subtitle: Modern Types and Classical Archetypes
Authors: Robert Fraser
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Life Writing
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35169-4
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-35168-7Published: 26 August 2020
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-35171-7Published: 26 August 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-35169-4Published: 25 August 2020
Series ISSN: 2730-9185
Series E-ISSN: 2730-9193
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVI, 273
Topics: Literary History, Classical and Antique Literature, Literary Theory