1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910484066203321

Autore

Fraser Robert

Titolo

After Ancient Biography [[electronic resource] ] : Modern Types and Classical Archetypes / / by Robert Fraser

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2020

ISBN

3-030-35169-6

Edizione

[1st ed. 2020.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (286 pages)

Collana

Palgrave Studies in Life Writing, , 2730-9185

Disciplina

226.066

Soggetti

Literature—History and criticism

Classical literature

Literature—Philosophy

Literary History

Classical and Antique Literature

Literary Theory

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

1. Chapter I: Paris in Parallel: Classical Biography in an Age of Revolution -- 2. Chapter II: Ancient Biographers and Modern Classicists: “What is Truth?” -- 3. Chapter III: Biography as Representation: Plutarch’s Parallel Lives -- 4. Chapter IV: Biography as Censure: Suetonius and Procopius -- 5. Chapter V: Biography as Persuasion: The Christian Gospels -- 6. Chapter VI: Biography as Inner Drama: Athanasius’s Life of Saint Antony -- 7. Chapter VII: Heroic Biography: Carlyle & Co. -- 7. Chapter VIII: Caustic Biography: Strachey & Co. -- 8. Conclusion: “Beauty is Terror”.

Sommario/riassunto

Marrying life-writing with classical reception, this book examines ancient biography and its impact on subsequent ages. Close readings of ancient texts are framed by an assessment of their influence on the age of the French Revolution and Napoleon, and on the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, of responses to ancient biography of modern critics, and of its visible legacy in art and film. Crucially it asks what modern biographers can learn from their ancient predecessors. Are the challenges involved in life-writing still the same?



Have working methods changed, and in what ways? What in the context of biographical writing is truth, and how are its interests best served? How is it possible, now as then, honestly to convey a life?