Literary Criticism Essay

Biographical reproof begins with the simple exclusively central insight that literature is written by actual mountain and that understanding an authors life can help readers to a greater extent thoroughly comprehend the work. Anyone who reads the chronicle of a writer quickly sees how overmuch an authors experience shapes both(prenominal) directly and indirectlywhat he or she creates. Reading that biography give to a fault change (and unremarkably deepen) our response to the work. Sometimes even knowing a single of the essence(p) fact illuminates our reading of a poem or story.Learning, for example, that Josephine Miles was confined to a wheelchair or that Weldon Kees committed suicide at forty-one will sure as shooting make us pay attention to certain aspects of their poems we might otherwise have missed or considered un heavy. A formalist critic might complain that we would also have noniced those things through careful textual analysis, scarcely biographical knowledg e provided the practical assistance of underscoring subtle but important meanings in the poems.Though many literary theorists have assailed biographical criticism on philosophical grounds, the biographical approach to literature has never disappeared because of its pellucid practical advantage in illuminating literary texts. It may be helpful here to make a distinction between biography and biographical criticism. Biography is, strictly speaking, a branch of history it provides a written account of a persons life.To establish and image the facts of a poets life, for instance, a biographer would use all the available informationnot just personal documents like letters and diaries, but also the poems for the possible light they might shed on the subjects life. A biographical critic, however, is not concerned with recreating the record of an authors life. Biographical criticism focuses on explicating the literary work by victimisation the insight provided by knowledge of the authors life. Quite a great deal biographical critics, like Brett C.Millier in her discussion of Elizabeth Bishops One Art, will examine the drafts of a poem or story to see both how the work came into being and how it might have been changed from its autobiographical origins. A reader, however, must use biographical interpretations cautiously. Writers are notorious for revising the facts of their own lives they ofttimes delete embarrassments and invent accomplishments while changing the details of real episodes to advance their literary impact.John Cheever, for example, frequently told reporters about his sunny, privileged youth afterward the authors death, his biographer Scott Donaldson discovered a childhood scarred by a distant mother, a failed, alcoholic father, and nagging economic uncertainty. Likewise, Cheevers outwardly successful adulthood was plagued by alcoholism, sexual promiscuity, and family tension.The chilling facts of Cheevers life significantly changed the way critic s read his stories. The danger in a famous writer s caseSylvia Plath and F. Scott Fitzgerald are two in advance(p) examplesis that the life story can overwhelm and eventually distort the work. A savvy biographical critic always remembers to base an interpretation on what is in the text itself biographical data should amplify the meaning of the text, not drown it out with irrelevant material.