History 428 History of Biography
A. Course Description
1. Catalog Description
This course provides an examination of the history of the literary form known as biography and
autobiography. The course examines five different types of biographies that have evolved from the
times of Plutarch to the present. Students will examine texts and determine what makes the biography
effective (or not) as an illustration of the human condition.
2. Course Outline
I. The Earliest Forms of Biography
A. The Greeks View of the Individual
B. Plutarch and the First Roman Biographies
C. Other Roman Models
II. The Middle Ages and the Renaissance
A. The Lives of Saints and Martyrs: The Moralistic Biographers
B. Cellini, Vasari and the Italian Renaissance
C. The Holinshed Chronicles of the Kings
D. Shakespeare as Biographer
III. Eighteenth Century England: The Age of Biography
A. Drama, Novels, and Travel Literature as Antecedents
B. Roger North and Edward Gibbon
C. William Mason and Oliver Goldsmith
IV. Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson
A. Boswell’s Approach to Biography
B. Johnson’s Early Years: The Biographers Problem
C. The Literary Career and the Circle of Friends
D. Johnson’s Character Revealed
E. Johnson’s Opinions on Contemporary Issues
V. The New Romantic Biographies
A. Parson Weems and George Washington
B. The New Moral Vision
C. The Role of Death Scenes
VI. Thomas Carlyle as Romantic Biographer
A. The Biography of Oliver Cromwell
B. The Life of Frederick the Great
C. Carlyle’s Success and Disappointments
VII. The Lesser Victorian Biographers
A. John Gibson Lockhart and Samuel Smiles
B. The Life of Thomas Arnold
C. Trevelyan’s Works
D. Other High Victorians
VIII. The Beginnings of Biography in the Modern Age
A. Lytton Strachey and the Narrative Biography
B. Eminent Victorians: An Example of the New Genre
C. The Life of Cardinal Manning
History 428 History of Biography
IX. The Strachey School’s Enduring Influence
A. The Life of Florence Nightingale
B. The Life of Dr. Arnold
C. Chinese Gordon and the Empire
X. The Ongoing Debate about the Stratchey School
A. The Trend to Add More Fiction
B. Catherine Drinker Bowen and the New Narrative School
C. The Life of John Adams
XI. The New Psycho biographies
A. Sigmund Freud
B. Freud’s Interest in the Individual and Dreams
C. The Life of Leonardo da Vinci
D. Problems with the Genre
XII. Freud’s Followers in the Social Sciences
A. The Splash over Young Man Luther
B. The Psychobiography of Garcia Moreno
C. Sociological Collective Biographies
D. Anthropological Biographies
XIII. The Feminist Biography
A. The Issue of Gender
B. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas
C. Zelda: The other Fitzgerald
XIV. Contemporary Biographies
A. The Resurgence of the Founding Fathers
B. New Trends in Biographies in the Twenty First Century
C. The Search for New Sources
3. Basic Instructional Plan and Methods
The course will be conducted primarily through discussion with some occasional lecturing. Students will
take regular quizzes on the readings as an impetus for better discussion. Most importantly, students will
write a 15 to 20 page biography on a subject of their own choosing, using primary and secondary
sources. This will enable History students to meet one of their Writing Flags.
4. Course requirements
Each student will complete a series of quizzes, a midterm examination and a final. Much of the grade
will be determined by a student’s participation in daily discussions, and by their performance on the
long paper.
5. Course materials - Textbooks:
Boswell, James. The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
Carlyle, Thomas. Sartor Resartus. (1834)
Freud, Sigmund. Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood (1910)
Stratchey, Lytton, Eminent Victorians. (1918)
Stein, Gertrude. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. (1933)
6. References
Anderson, Graham. Philostratus, Biography in 3rd Century AD. 1986
Anderson, Judith. Biographical Truth: The Representation of History. 1984
Backsneider, Paula. Reflections on Biography. 1999
Bowen, Catherine D. Adventurers of a Biographer. 1959
History 428 History of Biography
________. Biography: The Craft and the Calling . 1969
Bowman, David. Autobiography: Writing Yours, Reading Others. 1999
Broughton, Trev. Men of Letters: Literary Biography in Late Victorian. 1999
Byatt, A.S. The Biographers’ Tale. 2001
Caramello, Charles. Henry James, Gertrude Stein, and Biography. 1996
Clifford, James. Biography as an Art. 1962
Cockshut, O.J. Truth to Life: Art of Biography in the 19th Century. 1974
Collins, Joseph. The Doctor Looks at Biography: Psychobiography. 1925
Couser, G. Thomas. American Autobiography. 1979
Cox, Patricia. Biography in Late Antiquity. 1983
Cullickm Jonathan. Making History: The Biographical Narrative. 2000
Denzin, Norman. Interpretive Biography. 1989
Dorey, Thomas. Latin Biography. 1967
Dowling, William. The Boswellian Hero. 1979
_____________. Language and Logic in Boswell’s Life. 1981
Duff, Tim. Plutarch’s Lives: Explaining Virtue and Vice. 1999
Edel, Leon. Literary Biography. 1959
Ellis, David. Literary Lives. 2000
Elms, Alan. Uncovering Lives: Biography and Psychology. 1994
Fernandez, James. Apology to the Apostrophe: Autobiography. 1992
Ferns, John. Lytoon Strachey. 1988
France, Peter (ed.) Mapping Lives: The Use of Biography. 2002
Garraty, John. The Nature of Biography. 1957
Goodwin, James. Autobiography: The Self-Made Text. 1993
Hart, Kevin. Samuel Johnson and the Culture of Property. 1999
Heffernan, Sacred Biographies: Saints and their Biographies. 1988
Heilbrun, Carolyn. Writing a Woman’s Life. 1988
Hodas, Moses. Heroes and Gods: Spiritual Biographies in Antiquity. 1965
Holmes, Richard. Dr.Johnson and Mr. Savage. 1993
Honan, Park. Author’s Lives. 1990
Hoover, Herbert. Biography in the Writing of History. 1985
Hughson, Lois. From Biography to History. 1988
Hutch, Richard. Biography, Autobiography, and Spiritual Quest. 1997
Iles, Teresa (ed.) All Sides of the Subject: Women and Biography. 1992
Jane, Percy. French Introspectives from Montaigne to Maurois. 1937
Kendall, Paul M. The Art of Biography. 1965
Langness, Louis. The Life History in Anthropological Science. 1965
Lionnet, Francoise. Autobiographical Voices: Race and Gender. 1989
Lomask, Milton. The Biographer’s Craft. 1986
Longaker, John. English Biography in the 18th Century. 1971
Machann, Clinton. The Genre of Biography in Victorian Literature. 1994
Maurois, Andre. Aspects of Biography. 1919
Merrill, Dana. American Biography: Its Theory and Practice. 1957
Miller, Robert. Carlyle’s Life of John Sterling. 1987
Molloy, Sylvia. At Face Value: Autobiography in Spanish America. 1991
Momigliano, Amaldo. The Development of Greek Biography. 1971
Mullett, Charles. Biography as History. 1963
Nadel, Ira. Biography: Fiction, Fact, and Form. 1984
Nicholson, Harold. The Development of English Biography. 1927
Novarr, David Lines of Life: Theories of Biography. 1986
Parke, Catherine. Biography: Writing Lives. 1996
Redford, Bruce. Designing the Life of Johnson. 2002
Reed, Joseph. English Biography in the Early 19th Century. 1966
Reynolds, Frank. The Biographical Process: Studies in History. 1976
Runyan, William. Life Histories and Psychobiography. 1982
Salwak, Dale. The Literary Biography: Problems. 1996
History 428 History of Biography
Scardigli, Barbara. Essays on Plutarch’s Lives. 1995
Schoenblum, S. Shakespeare’s Lives. 1970.
Schwartz, Richard. Boswell’s Johnson. 1978
Serafin, Steven ed. Eighteenth Century Literary Biographies. 1994
______________. Nineteenth Century British Literary Biographies. 1994
Siebenshuh, William. Form and Purpose in Boswell’s Biographies. 1972
Sisman, Adam. Boswell’s Presumptuous Task: Making the Life . 2001
Spaduccini, Nicholas. Autobiography in early Modern Spain. 1988
Starling, Marion. The Slave Narrative. 1988
Stauffer, Donald. The Art of Biography in 18th Century England. 1970
_____________. English Biography before 1700. 1930
Stone, George. In Search of Restoration and 18th Century Biography. 1976
Stuart, Duane. Epochs of Greek and Roman Biography. 1928
Tolley, Christopher. Domestic Biography. Evangelicals in the 19th Century, 1997
Votaw, Clyde. The Gospels and Biography in Greco-Roman World. 1970
Wagner-Martin, Linda. Telling Women’s Lives. 1994
Watson, Martha. Lives of their Own: Rhetoric of Women. 1999
Wendorf, Richard. Elements of Life: Biography in Stuart England. 1990
Whittemore, Reed. Pure Lives: the Early Biographers. 1988
______________. Whole Lives: Shapers of the Modern Biography. 1989
Yelton, Donald. Brief American Lives: Collective Biography. 1978
Young-Bruehl, Linda. Subject to Biography: Psychoanalysis and Feminism . 1998
B. Rationale
1. Statement of major focus and objectives of the course:
This course will focus on the evolution of biography through historical times by examining some classics
of the genre in western literature. We will examine biographies that are intended to illuminate the
personality of an outstanding individual, biographies that romanticize life and try to teach moral lessons
from it, biographies that look at an individual through psychological lenses, biographies that fictionalize
portions of the text in order to tell a better story, and biographies that focus on a life from a feminist
point of view. By the end of the course, students will have a greater understanding of the range of
biographical works and will be able to analyze the differences between different biographies.
2. How this new course contributes to the departmental curriculum:
The department is proposing this course to broaden the upper-level electives for History and Social
Science/History majors. In addition, the course will be one of the courses that meet the Writing Flag for
the History major.
3. Courses which may be dropped if this course is approved:
None
C. Impact of this course on other departments, programs, majors or minors:
Approval of this course will not change the number of credits required by any program.
The department has consulted with the English Department about this class, and the latter department
believes this is a good offering.
D. University Studies Course Proposals:
The department is proposing this course as a Writing Flag for University Studies.