Writing biographies

As far as the model for biography is concerned, one of the most influential biographies was Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography which firmly established the form of autobiography as a potent form of biography writing. Though seems rather old-fashioned, one cannot jettison the idea of Thomas Carlyle that the biographies of the great men and women were to understand society and its institution. It is obvious that the subject of a biography cannot be contextualised outside its milieu and the historical socio-political circumstances that produced the subject.

In this week’s column, we examine the art of writing biographies. What is interesting to note is that a biography of a person should, ideally, as interesting and absorbing as any other fiction and only difference is that it may be a narrative between a fiction and faction. Although biography contains the rudimentary information of a person such as date of birth and significant events of the subject, it is a narrative which captures the essence of the subject’s legacy of life.

In simple terms, biography can be described as the history of a lifetime. A biography narrates the most important facts of the subject; his or her childhood, adolescence, educational background, professional life, marriage, children, and most outstanding achievements as a person in his or her chosen field. The biography would also relate anecdotes, memories, excursions and cherished moments of the subject although they may constitute the meat of the biography. In essence, biography is the most prized legacy to the world and also to the family and well-wishers of the subject.

One of the important characteristics of a biography is that it deals with a complete life building bridges between generations; bringing the subject close to future generation, instilling pride of belonging in future generations. Although biography involves a very little fiction (It is, indeed, faction), a grain of fiction is used to portray the subject’s life. An authorised or official biography is written with the permission, cooperation and sometimes with the direct involvement with the subject.

Early biographies

The early biographies could be traced back to the early middle ages (AD 400-1450) where there was a marked decline in the knowledge of classical culture in Europe. It was observed that during that period, the only repositories of knowledge and records were those of the Roman Catholic Church. It is believed that the hermits, monks, and priests used to write what could easily be classified as modern biographies. Their subjects of these biographies were often restricted to the church fathers, martyrs, popes and saints. The primary motive of these biographies was to inspire the devotees and non-devotees and effectively use them as modes of conversion to Christianity. The life of Charlemagne by his courtier Einhard was, however, one of the important examples for the secular form of a biography.

A significant aspect of the medieval Islamic civilisation (AD 750-1258) was the proliferation of biographies. This development was spearheaded by the discovery of paper and with the firm establishment of Prophetic biography tradition. One of the by-products of this surge of biographies during the medieval Islamic civilisation was the birth of new literary genre; the biographical dictionary. Interestingly the first ever biographical dictionaries in the Muslim were written in 9th century onwards.

What is significant in these writings is that they contained socio-economic data of a considerable segment of the population of the pre-industrial society.

The principal focus of the earliest biographical dictionaries was on the lives of the prophets of Islam and their companies as in The Book of The Major Classes by Ibn Sa’d al-Baghdadi. Later on, they began to record the lives of historical figures such as rulers and scholars of the medieval Islamic world.

Modern biography

Middle Ages can be considered as the period in which the rudimentary form of modern biography developed. By that time, biographies became less church-oriented and deals extensively with famous historical figures such as kings, knights and diverse rulers. One of the most famous biographies of this nature was Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thgomas Malory. It deals with the life of king Arthur and his knights. Malory’s break from the convention of biography writing led to the more secular biographies on Artists and poets during the Renaissance with emphasis on humanism.

One of the milestones of the development of secular biographies was Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists (1550) and it became a bestseller. It was during the reign of King Henry VII that English biographies began to appear. John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (1563) or Foxe’s Book of Martyrs was the first dictionary of biographies in Europe.

As far as the model for biography is concerned, one of the most influential biographies was Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography which firmly established the form of autobiography as a potent form of biography writing. Though seems rather old-fashion, one cannot jettison the idea of Thomas Carlyle that the biographies of the great men and women were to understand the society and its institution. It is obvious that the subject of a biography cannot be contextualised outside its milieu and the historical socio-political circumstances that produced the subject.

One of the popular modes of biography is multimedia biographies. The latest is CD-ROM and on-line biographies. The principal difference between these digitalised biographies and conventional biography is that digital geographies are repository of information, picture and audio-visual files on a person and not a narrative in chronological order.

Sri Lankan scene

Most popular approach of biographies (both Sinhala and English) is the literary biographies with a special emphasis of making the subject an icon. However, there are autobiographies such as the one wrote by Sir Solomon Dias Bandaranaike which sheds lights on colonial life not only in Sri Lanka but also in UK. The danger in this popular mode of biography writing in Sri Lanka is that the biographer runs the risk of reducing the biography to eulogies causing irreparable damage to the historical personality and his or her contribution to the nation.