Biographical / Historical Criticism

A detailed Summary of Biographical / Historical Criticism

Biographical / Historical criticism takes its name from where emphasis is placed when trying to understand the true meaning in a work of literature. The word Biographical comes from the emphasis placed on the author, while the word Historical comes from the emphasis placed on an age or era that the author lived in. This is also known as genetic criticism because of the idea that the author and his/her work are the offspring of an age. Studying the age in which an author lived can be helpful in understanding the author's intention of a work. The purpose of this type of criticism is to be as accurate as possible when trying to locate meaning in literature. To do this Biographical / Historical criticism must ask what the author meant when he/she created it. It is the search for the author's true intention, if in fact there even was one.

This concept is the result of two main influences. The first was a change from the reflection of nature to the reflection or expression of the individual. This concept dominated at the beginning of the 19th century. The author was now seen as an individual and as being unique. The second influence was the idea that each age has different assumptions and different values. This appeared in t

Biographical / Historical criticism is helpful for many reasons. First of all this type of criticism goes right to the source of information, the author. We can better understand the minds that created the works we read today and it is a reflection of the unique minds that were caught up in a unique age in time. Secondly a great amount of information is delivered to us, when we study and learn about the age in which an author lived, about the author and his/her work. This provides us the most logical way to be most accurate in understanding literature. Finally there is academic respectability. Biographical / Historical criticism was responsible for organizing literary study and placing English Literature in a respectable seat in the first universities.

Just as there are strengths to this criticism, there are drawbacks as well. One of the greatest setbacks is that the author is not always sure of his/her intention at the time of writing the piece of work. After editing, re-reading, and re-writing the meaning ay be far from the authors original intention. It may have changed altogether. Another problem is that there is often a lack of biographical information on an author and it becomes more difficult to be accurate. Although we can study the age of an author, the author may not be typical of the age. Historical criticism also can become problematic when we use a piece of work to explain the life of an author and then turn around and use the life of the author to explain a piece of work. This is not a very efficient way to locate any

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Approximate Word count = 1049
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History