What Is a Biographical Approach to Literary
Criticism?
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What Is Literary Criticism?
Biographical Approach
The Author’s Life and Beliefs
Tips for Using the Biographical Approach
Supporting Biographical Criticism
What Is Literary Criticism?
To engage in literary criticism, you must
• analyze, evaluate, and respond
to a piece of literature
• use evidence from the text to
support your claims
What Is Literary Criticism?
There are many “lenses” through which you can
view a work of fiction. For example:
• Feminist criticism notes
whether the work treats
women in a balanced way
or presents them as
stereotypes.
• Historical criticism looks at the work as a
product of a particular historical period.
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What Is Literary Criticism?
Biographical Approach
The biographical approach to literary criticism, or
biographical criticism, examines the way a writer’s
work reflects his or her
background
experiences
beliefs
What Is Literary Criticism?
Biographical Approach
To use a biographical approach in literary criticism,
you need to learn about the writer’s biography, or
life story.
• Research facts about the writer, including
interviews and quotations.
• Try to understand the writer’s
• heritage, or background
• traditions, attitudes, and beliefs
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The Author’s Life and Beliefs
Writers’ lives often influence their subject matter.
However, fiction is not autobiography.
• Characters may reflect
their authors’ heritage
and beliefs
• but the characters are
not identical with their
authors.
Manuel in “La
author Gary
Bamba”
Soto
The Author’s Life and Beliefs
Writers use their knowledge of situations, people,
and emotions to create realistic characters and
scenes.
However, they also use their imaginations.
Author: Gary Paulsen
Knowledge: trained
and raced sled dogs in
Alaska; experienced
harsh conditions
Knowledge +
Imagination: wrote
about a boy stranded in
the Canadian wilderness
The Author’s Life and Beliefs
Sometimes, writers invent characters and situations
that seem unrelated to their—or anyone’s!—
experiences.
• Yet in some way, the writer is
writing about something he
or she knows: for example,
human hopes, dreams, or
fears.
fear of the unknown
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Tips for Using the Biographical Approach
Here are some tips for using a biographical
approach in literary criticism.
1. Do not assume that a fictional character,
especially one who narrates the story and
speaks as “I,” is the writer.
2. When you wonder if something in a work
reflects the writer’s heritage or background,
check a biography of the writer to be sure
your hunch is correct.
Tips for Using the Biographical Approach
Here are some tips for using a biographical
approach in literary criticism.
3. Be specific in citing connections between the
work and the writer’s life. Don’t assume that,
because the main characters in the writer’s
works tend to be rebels or outsiders, the
writer must be a rebel. Sometimes writers like
to write about the kind of people they wish
they had been.
Tips for Using the Biographical Approach
Here are some tips for using a biographical
approach in literary criticism.
4. Do not ignore the part played by the writer’s
imagination. Do not assume that every
realistic detail in the story is based on fact. A
good writer does not have to be a man in
order to writer about male characters, nor a
police officer to write about crime.
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Supporting Biographical Criticism
Poor literary criticism begins and ends with remarks
like these:
I was a little bored.
I hated it.
It was great.
Supporting Biographical Criticism
In biographical criticism, you have to support every
claim you make.
You support your claims with
• details from the text
• facts about the writer’s life
Supporting Biographical Criticism
Following is an example of an appropriate
biographical criticism of a novel. The criticism works
because the writer
• researched facts about the life of
author Sandra Cisneros
• tells us specifically how the novel
reflects those facts of the writer’s life
Supporting Biographical Criticism
An appropriate biographical criticism of a novel:
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
is shaped by the writer’s own experiences growing up
in a Mexican American family in a Chicago barrio.
The house in the book’s title probably refers to the
house the Cisneros family purchased when Sandra
was young; Sandra hated the house because she
thought it was ugly and old. In the same way, the
girl in the novel hates the house her family has
moved into, which is also in a Chicago barrio.
Supporting Biographical Criticism
An appropriate biographical criticism of a novel:
The main character, Esperanza (for “hope”), a
determined but sensitive little girl, is clearly based on
Cisneros herself. Esperanza uses writing as a way of
escaping Mango Street in her imagination. Sandra
Cisneros actually did escape her neighborhood by
writing successful books.
Supporting Biographical Criticism
An appropriate biographical criticism of a novel:
There is another similarity: The women on
Mango Street, including Esperanza, are dominated by
men. Some of the women characters in the novel
never seem to leave their homes. In the same way,
Cisneros fought to be independent of the men who
dominated her own life. She was the only girl in a
family of seven children.
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What Is a Biographical Approach to Literary
Criticism?
Quick Check
I woke up at 6AM without having set
the alarm. It was just another Saturday
morning—except that I was thirteen
instead of twelve, and I was on a
military base in Germany instead of at
home in my own bed. At least we’d
been able to bring my cat Paulie with
us.
As if to show her annoyance, Paulie
stalked across the bed and bit my ear.
“Ow!” I yelled. “Is that your idea of a
birthday greeting?”
You can be sure
that the “I” in
this story is
the writer
the narrator
a minor character
How might you find
out if the author
lived in Germany as
a teenager?
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Using the Biographical Approach
Your Turn
Choose one of the following stories from your
textbook:
• “The Treasure of Lemon Brown” by Walter Dean
Myers or
• “An Hour with Abuelo” by Judith Ortiz Cofer
Read the selection as well as the accompanying author
biography. Discuss how the work reflects the writer’s
heritage, traditions, attitudes, and beliefs.
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The End