Writing Biography

Fred Schoerner (Photo Comp Serv #1) 719 2001 Feb 21 14:51:40

Description

The historian as biographer must resolve questions that reflect the dual challenge of telling history and telling lives: How does the biographer sort out the individual’s role within the larger historical context? How do biographical studies relate to other forms of history? Should historians use different approaches to biography, depending on the cultures of their subjects? What are the appropriate primary sources and techniques that scholars should use in writing biographies in their respective fields?

In Writing Biography, six prominent historians address these issues and reflect on their varied experiences and divergent perspectives as biographers. Shirley A. Leckie examines the psychological and personal connections between biographer and subject; R. Keith Schoppa considers the pervasive effect of culture on the recognition of individuality and the presentation of a life; Retha M. Warnicke explores past context and modern cultural biases in writing the biographies of Tudor women; John Milton Cooper Jr. discusses the challenges of writing modern biographies and the interplay of the biographer’s own experiences; Nell Irvin Painter looks at the process of reconstructing a life when written documents are scant; and Robert J. Richards investigates the intimate relationship between life experiences and new ideas. Despite their broad range of perspectives, all six scholars agree on two central points: biography and historical analysis are inextricably linked, and biographical studies offer an important tool for analyzing historical questions.

Sujets

• Lettres et linguistique
• Historiography
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Nebraska
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780803204126
• Langue: English

Extrait

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Writing Biography

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Writing Biography

Historians & Their Craft

Edited by Lloyd E. Ambrosius

University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln & London

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Copyright © 2004 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. Chapter 5 copyright © 2004 by Nell Irvin Painter. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. Set in Quadraat. Book designed by Richard Eckersley  

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Writing biography : historians and their craft / edited by Lloyd E. Ambrosius. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn0-8032-1066-3 (cloth : alkaline paper) 1. Biography as a literary form.i. Ambrosius, Lloyd E. ct21 .w735 2004 808'.06692–dc22 2003019697

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Contents

Lloyd E. Ambrosius

Shirley A. Leckie

R. Keith Schoppa

Retha M. Warnicke

John Milton Cooper Jr.

Nell Irvin Painter

Robert J. Richards

vii

1

27

53

79

103

133

155

159

Introduction

1. Biography Matters: Why Historians Need Well-Crafted Biographies More than Ever

2. Culture and Context in Biographical Studies: The Case of China

3. Reshaping Tudor Biography: Anne Boleyn and Anne of Cleves

4. Conception, Conversation, and Comparison: My Experiences as a Biographer

5.Ut Pictura Poesis; or The Sisterhood of the Verbal and Visual Arts

6. Did Friedrich Schelling Kill Auguste Böhmer and Does It Matter? The Necessity of Biography in the History of Philosophy

List of Contributors

Index

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Introduction

Lloyd E. Ambrosius

Between 7 and 9 September 2000, the Department of History of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln held its first Carroll R. Pauley Memorial Endowment Symposium on the topic “Biography and Historical Analy- sis.” We invited six prominent historians in various fields to reflect on their experiences as biographers. From their different perspectives, these scholars offered their insights into the writing of biography as a form of historical analysis. Professors Shirley A. Leckie of the University of Central Florida, R. Keith Schoppa of Loyola College of Maryland, Retha M. Warnicke of Arizona State University, John Milton Cooper Jr. of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Nell Irvin Painter of Princeton Univer- sity, and Robert J. Richards of the University of Chicago presented their original scholarly papers at the symposium. This volume is the product of their work. Chosen because of the diversity of their perspectives on the sympo- sium’s theme a reflection of their various personal and academic back- grounds, fields of expertise, and methodological approaches these six scholars offered a broad range of interpretations. The three women had written biographical studies of women from different social classes in England and the United States. Their subjects included U.S. soldiers’ wives and a historian, English queens, and an African American slave who became a leading feminist and abolitionist. Like their female subjects,

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viii Introduction

these authors focused on social issues of gender and race. Their studies shed new light on politics too. The three men had written biographical studies of men. Their subjects included a revolutionary Chinese leader, a U.S. ambassador, two U.S. presidents, and a German philosopher. While focusing on male political and intellectual leaders, they, too, addressed social issues of class, gender, and race. They, too, appreciated the cultural connections between the personal and public aspects of a subject’s life. All six scholars, notwithstanding their diversity, agreed on one cen- tral point: Biography and historical analysis are inextricably intertwined. For them, biographical studies offer a way to analyze important histor- ical questions. Moreover, they affirmed, biographers must use the best historical methodologies, utilizing all available primary sources and in- terpreting them in creative ways, to reveal the life stories of subaltern as well as prominent and powerful women and men. As requested, these six historians focused on the symposium’s theme of biography and historical analysis. They analyzed the problems of con- ceptualization and methodology with which historians in various fields must deal. They addressed questions such as the following: How does the biographer sort out the individual’s role within the larger historical context? How do biographical studies relate to other forms of history? Should historians use different approaches to biography depending upon the societies or cultures in which the subjects lived? What are the appro- priate primary sources and techniques that scholars should use in writing biographies in their fields? The original contributions of this book come from the various answers that the six historians gave to these questions. A specialist in the American West, Shirley A. Leckie argued that biogra- phy is an important form of historical analysis that can enable readers to transcend their own personal experiences and encounter another person from a different time and place. For that to occur, however, the biographer must present the subject in such a way that “a living being walks off the pages.” This requires empathy to recognize both internal and external influences, both the psychological dimensions and the environmental circumstances that shaped a person’s life. While retaining a certain de- tachment from the subject to achieve as much historical objectivity as possible, so as to distinguish between fact and fiction, the biographer

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Introduction ix

must see the world from that other person’s perspective. This kind of per- sonal understanding must be fully informed by research in all available records, both public and private. When, as is often the case for women or people of color, primary sources are inadequate to answer important questions about a person’s life, biographers must make creative use of whatever is available. Historian Angie Debo employed this approach in her study of Geronimo, as did Leckie in her biography of Debo. Leckie urged historians to undertake biographical studies of other historians in order to explore the “participant-observer” relationship inherent in writ- ing biography. Along with Leon Edel, she contended that a biographer must become a participant in the world in which the subject lived but at the same time remain outside that world as a critical observer. By doing this well, Leckie concluded, historians can write biographies that enable readers to experience the lives of others. Thus biography matters as a way of providing meaningful access to other people in different times and places. R. Keith Schoppa, whose specialty is modern China, stressed that cul- ture and context of both the biographers and their subjects profoundly influence the renderings of the past that different people embrace as his- tory. In Chinese history, he explained, the dominant understanding of relationships between individuals and groups has been quite different from that in the modern West. To avoid imposing an erroneous interpre- tation onto a Chinese subject’s life, a Western biographer, like Schoppa himself, must therefore recognize this essential difference between the individual-group dynamics operating in the Chinese context and those operating in the West. He stressed the role of social connections and networks in defining the identity and controlling the life and death of Chi- nese people, such as Shen Dingyi, whom he studied. Emphasizing this difference between Chinese and Western cultures, Schoppa noted that individualism has contributed to the popularity of biography as a form of history in the West. Western cultural assumptions about individualism, which Western historians have shared, have encouraged the writing and reading of biography that features an individual rather than a group. But in China a person’s identity derives from the group, from the inherited name, not from individual choice. The biographer of a Chinese subject

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