전기 연구의 이론과 현대적 의미

• 영문명: The Theory of Biographical Research and Its Modern Perspective
• 발행기관: 한국영미어문학회
• 저자명: 이유생(Yu-saeng Lee)
• 간행물 정보: 『영미어문학』영미어문학 제78호, 139~159쪽, 전체 21쪽
• 주제분류: 어문학 > 영어와문학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2006.03.01

영문 초록

  This study discusses the theories, history, characteristics, and criteria of a biographical research in current literary criticism. While disputing current trends and historical backgrounds in biographical research, this essay tries to reassert the status of biography in the literary criticism and to define the literary value of biography in the narrative structure.
  Despite its presumed secondary status in literary studies until the 20th century, biography has dealt with so much humanistic materials that a great number of readers and critics have been attracted to it. It suggests that in our interest toward the lives of others, there is at least the possibility of biography as a literary genre in critical studies of literature. That"s because lives as lived don"t have the shape of art, but lives as written ought at least to deserve the status of literature. There has been, however, hesitation about admitting a biography into a literary genre. On the one hand, it was due to the absence of a critical theory about biography; on the other hand, there has been difficulty in defining the words used in critical dispute.
  Biographers share with novelists a common interest in the narrative in that both of them are concerned about the narrative structure. The difference between the two is that while a novel is a fictive narrative, a biography is a narrative composed of facts. Since biography is written on the basis of factual incidents after their occurrences, it"s always destined to be a delayed and provisional discourse. There can never be a definitive biography, but merely a version, an attempt, a narrative which bears impression of those times when the biography is written. Modern biographical research can open up a new possibility for a new way of writing by breaking down the boundaries existing among author, narrator, reader. In this sense we can read a biography both as a potential narrative depicting the life of a person and as a narrative rewritten consistently.

키워드

전기 전기연구 서사 작가 에델 스트라치 biography biographical research narrative Leon Edel Lytton Strachey