Biographical fiction : a reader
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Bibliographic Information
Biographical fiction : a reader
Bloomsbury Academic, 2017
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- : hb
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In recent years, the biographical novel has become one of the most dominant literary forms-J.M. Coetzee, Margaret Atwood, Hilary Mantel, Colum McCann, Anne Enright, Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Carey, Russell Banks, and Julia Alvarez are just a few luminaries who have published stellar biographical novels. But why did this genre come into being mainly in the 20th century? Is it ethical to invent stories about an actual historical figure? What is biofiction uniquely capable of signifying? Why are so many prominent writers now authoring such works? And why are they winning such major awards?
In Biographical Fiction: A Reader, some of the finest scholars and writers of biofiction clarify what led to the rise of this genre, reflect on its nature and form, and specify what it is uniquely capable of doing. Combining primary and critical material, this accessible reader will be invaluable to students, teachers, and scholars of biofiction.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Authors' Reflections:
1. Leonard Ehrlich: "Author's Note" from God's Angry Man (1932)
2. Wallace Stegner: Forward from Joe Hill: A Biographical Novel (1950)
3. S. Guy Endore: "A Final Word" from King of Paris (1956)
4. William Styron: "Nat Turner Revisited" from American Heritage (1992)
5. Julia Alvarez: "A Postscript" from In the Time of the Butterflies (1994)
6. Barbara Chase-Riboud: "Afterword" from Sally Hemings (1994)
7. Malcolm Bradbury: "Preface" from To the Hermitage (2000)
8. David Ebershoff: "Introduction" to The Danish Girl (2000)
9. Thomas Mallon: "The Historical Novelist's Burden of Truth" from In Fact (2001)
10. Jane Yolen and Robert J. Harris: "What is true about this story" from Girl in a Cage (2002)
11. Colm Toibin: "Henry James for Venice" from The Henry James Review (2006)
12. M. Allen Cunningham: "Author's Note" from Lost Son (2007)
13. Susan Sellers: "About Vanessa and Virginia" from the Two Ravens Press UK website (2008)
14. Brian Hall: "Author's Note" from Fall of Frost (2008)
15. Barbara Mujica: "Going for the Subjective: One Way to Write Biographical Fiction" from a/b:Auto/Biography Studies (2016)
16. Joanna Scott: "On Hoaxes, Humbugs, and Fictional Portraiture" from a/b: Auto/Biography Studies (2016)
The Case of Eliza Lynch
17. William E. Barrett: "Foreword" from Woman on Horseback: The Biography of Francisco Lopez and Eliza Lynch (1938)
18. Anne Enright: "Acknowledgments" from The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (2002)
19. Lily Tuck: "Author's Note" from The News from Paraguay (2004)
Lectures and Forums:
20. Irving Stone: "The Biographical Novel" from Three Views of the Novel (1957)
21. C. Vann Woodward, Ralph Ellison, Robert Penn Warren and William Styron: "The Uses of History in Fiction" from The Southern Literary Journal (1968)
22. Michael Lackey, Jay Parini, Bruce Duffy and Lance Olsen: "The Uses of History in the
Biographical Novel" from Conversations with Jay Parini (2014)
Interviews:
23. Julia Alvarez: "Fixed Facts and Creative Freedom in the Biographical Novel" from Truthful Fictions (2014)
24. Russell Banks: "The Truth Contract in the Biographical Novel" from Truthful Fictions (2014)
25. Bruce Duffy: "In the Fog of the Biographical Novel's History" from Truthful Fictions (2014)
26. Joyce Carol Oates: "Enhanced Symbolic Interiors in the Biographical Novel" from Truthful Fictions (2014)
Essays:
27. Georg Lukacs: "The Biographical Form and Its 'Problematics'" from The Historical Novel (1937)
28. Carl Bode: "The Buxom Biographies" from College English (1955)
29. Paul Murray Kendall: Excerpt from "Contemporary Biography" from The Art of Biography (1965)
30. Ina Schabert: "Fictional Biography, Factual Biography, and their Contamination" from
Biography (1982)
31. Alain Buisine: "Biofictions" from Revue des Sciences Humaines (1991)
32. Jay Parini: "Fact or Fiction: Writing Biographies Versus Writing Novels" from Some Necessary Angels: Essays on Writing and Politics (1997)
33. Martin Middeke: "Introduction" from Biofictions: The Rewriting of Romantic Lives in
Contemporary Fiction and Drama (1999)
34. John Keener: Chapters four and five from Biography and the Postmodern Historical Novel (2001)
35. Ansgar Nunning: "Fictional Metabiographies and Metaautobiographies: Towards a
Definition, Typology and Analysis of Self-Reflexive Hybrid Metegenres" from Self-Reflexivity in Literature (2005)
36. Valentina Vannucci: "The Canon and Biofiction: The Subjects of History and New Literary Worlds" from Altri Canoni/ Canoni Altri: Pluralismo e Studi Letterari (2011)
37. Monica Latham: "'Serv[ing] under two masters': Virginia Woolf's Afterlives in Contemporary Biofictions" from a/b: Auto/Biography Studies (2012)
Bibliography
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