Journal Facts

Journal
Auto/Biography
ISSN
0967-5507
Volume
13
Issue
3

Article Facts

Title
Literary Biomythography
DOI
10.1191/0967550705ab024oa
Author
Michael Benton (University of Southampton, UK)
Pages
206-226

Article Links

Literary Biomythography

Michael Benton (University of Southampton, UK)

DOI: 10.1191/0967550705ab024oa

Abstract

Myth-making is endemic in the life histories of novelists and poets. Literary biographies are complicit in the process even when they seek to demythologize their subjects. This article outlines a five-phase development in the Brontë myth as the paradigm of `biomythography'. Life writings about Byron, Dickens and Sylvia Plath are then shown to follow a similar pattern and to exemplify, respectively, the characteristics of celebrity, idolatry and martyrdom that typify myth-making and which literary biography both helps to create and attempts to expose.

References

  1. Ackroyd, P. 1999. Dickens. London: Vintage.
  2. Alexander, P. 1991. Rough magic. A biography of Sylvia Plath. New York: Da Capo Press.
  3. Altick, R.D. 1965. Lives and letters. A history of literary biography in England and America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
  4. Alvarez, A. 1974. The savage God: A study in suicide. HarmondsworthPenguin.
  5. Barker, J. 1994. The Brontës. London: Phoenix.
  6. Bate, J. 1997. The Genius of Shakespeare. London : Picador.
  7. Daiches, D. Bell, C. 1985. Editor's preface to the new [1850] edition of Wuthering Heights pp. 37-41. Penguin.
  8. Byatt, A.S. 1991. Possession. A romance. London: Vintage.
  9. Chesterton, G.K. 1975. Charles Dickens. London: Burns and Oates.
  10. Christiansen, R. 1989. Romantic affinities. Portraits from an age 1780—1830. London: Sphere Books.
  11. Denzin, N.K. 1989. Interpretive biography. Qualitative research methods. London: Sage Publications.
  12. Eisler, B. 2000. Byron. Child of passion, fool of fame. HarmondsworthPenguin.
  13. Feinstein, E. 2002. Ted Hughes. The life of a poet. London : Phoenix.
  14. Frye, N. 1957. The anatomy of criticism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  15. Gaskell, E. 1975. The life of Charlotte Brontë. HarmondsworthPenguin.
  16. Gilbert, S.M., Gubar, S. 1979. The madwoman in the attic. The woman writer and the nineteenth-century literary imagination. New Haven, CT and London. Yale University Press.
  17. Gordon, L. 1994. Charlotte Brontë. A passionate life. London: Vintage.
  18. Hayman, R. 2003. The death and life of Sylvia Plath. StroudSutton Publishing.
  19. Batchelor, J. Holmes, R. 1995. Inventing the truth pp. 17-23. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.
  20. Hughes, T. 1994. Winter pollen. Occasional prose. London : Faber.
  21. ——— 1998. Birthday letters. London: Faber.
  22. Johnson, E. 1986. Charles Dickens. His tragedy and triumph. HarmondsworthPenguin.
  23. Kaplan, F. 1988. Dickens. A biography. London : Hodder and Stoughton.
  24. Lee, H. 1997. Virginia Woolf. London: Vintage.
  25. MacCarthy, F. 2003. Byron. Life and legend. London : Faber.
  26. Malcolm, J. 1995. The silent woman. Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. London: Macmillan.
  27. Miller, L. 2001. The Brontë myth. London: Jonathan Cape.
  28. Newman, C. 1971. The art of Sylvia Plath. A symposium. Bloomington and London. Indiana University Press.
  29. Plath, S. 1965. Ariel. London: Faber.
  30. Rose, J. 1992. The haunting of Sylvia Plath. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  31. Runyan, W. McKinley 1984. Life histories and psychobiography. Explorations in theory and method. New York and Oxford. Oxford University Press.
  32. Sisman, A. 2001. Boswell's presumptuous task. Writing the life of Dr Johnson. HarmondsworthPenguin.
  33. Stevenson, A. 1989. Bitter fame. A life of Sylvia Plath. London: Viking.
  34. Tennant, E. 1999. Burnt diaries. London: Canongate.
  35. ——— 2001. The ballad of Sylvia and Ted. New York : Henry Holt.
  36. Tomalin, C. 1991. The invisible woman. The story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens. HarmondsworthPenguin.
  37. Uglow, J. 1999. Elizabeth Gaskell. A habit of stories. London: Faber.
  38. Wagner, E. 2002. Ariel's gift. Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and the story of Birthday Letters. London: Faber.
  39. Wagner-Martin, L. 1987. Sylvia Plath. A biography. London : Chatto and Windus.
  40. ——— 2003. Sylvia Plath. A literary life. London : Macmillan.
  41. Williams, J. 1980. The practical princess and other liberating fairy tales. London: Scholastic.
  42. Woolf, V. 1967. The new biography pp. 229-35. London: The Hogarth Press.

Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.