Biography for history

Try the literature selection service. You can always turn off the advertisement. BIOOGRAPHY and HISTORY: The Problem of Correlaration and Balance Examines the Problem of the Correlaration Between Historic and Biographic Genres By Contrasting Whats Historians, Biographers, and Philosophers have Said on the Matter. Poles Russian University of Friendship of Peoples st. Miklukho-Maclay, 6, Moscow, Russia, the author considers the problem of the relationship between historical and biographical genres, comparing the statements on this issue of historians, biographers and philosophers, and raises the question: what does Plutarch mean, saying: “We write not history, but biographies”?

Key words: history, biography, autobiography, genre, genre criterion. It is unlikely that anyone will have a suspicion that, stating in the preface to Alexander’s biography: “We write not a story, but biographies,” Plutarch does not understand what he means; However, the reader’s conviction is that he shares this understanding with the biographer may be premature. The relationship between the historical and biographical genre since Plutarch’s time has not become more clear: with each era as a result of an increase in both the case of historical and biographical compositions directly, and the volume of theoretical statements on the problem of the ratio of the genres of considered, the picture was only more complicated and became more contradictory.

The points of view of this issue were not least determined by their “workshop” affiliation: historians often looked at the biography from top to bottom as something insufficiently scientific-state, and sometimes simply marginal; Biographers often interpreted history as rude raw materials for their own creativity, recognizing the meaning of a nail on which the biographer hangs his picture.

When Carleil claims that the story is nothing more than a combination of countless biographies 1, he means, of course, not generically designed works: from his point of view of the “personalist”, the story does not, in comparison with biography, his own object - the difference between both dwarves, purely quantitative. Ed completely differently thinks. Meyer, categorically declare: “The scripture of biographies is not historical activity” 2.

The thesis of Meyer was hastened to refute L. Stepchi, A. Morua, E. Ludwig and other “practitioners” biographers, but B. Croce contemptuously christened “Guido da Verona” 3, and R. Coling-Wood solemnly declared the principles on which biography is built, as much as biography is built, as much as biography is built, as much as biography It did not contain historical material, not only historical, but even anti-historical 4, which, in turn, did not prevent A.

Momilano from nine years later, confidently to state: “Today, apparently, no one doubts that the biography is a type of history.” Such a kind of statement, of course, immediately give rise to the principle of arranging historical weights for weighing heroes. The eccentricity of Alcibiades is obvious 8, but it does not allow us to underestimate its considerable role in the development of events of the final stage of the Peloponnesian war - if it is excluded by Plutarch himself as a witness to a celebration, a lot of evidence of this can be found in Fukidid and Xenophon.

The same in relation to the initial stage of the Great French Revolution can be said about Mirabeau; Do not underestimate the historical significance of the activity of Borge, who inspired Machiavelli to create his most famous work. Theorists of the biographical genre are not more than historians; So, John Perreti, who defines the biogrphia as the “History of the Mankeep of Life” “History of a Human Life” 9, objects P.

However, this is not the same remark, nor many other subtle judgments that the mentioned book is rich will help us to orient the biography regarding history, to feel the Granny that separating both genres. Having highlighted two types of biographies: the biography-reconstruction and biography created by the contemporary of the hero 12 which, by the way, was considered the only possible, declaring the first “decent charlatanism” 13, raising the problem of polarization of the biography, depending on the distribution of her author’s attention between the hero with his inner world and the surrounding hero at the “psychography” in the spirit of G.

Frimen 14 and, finally, and, finally, and finally Having included in the consideration of this circle of problems there is also an autobiography on the basis of common features, uniting this genre 15 in the eyes of researchers with a biography, written by a contemporary of Hero 16, scientists have significantly complicated a picture in which they do not make clarity and attempts to consider the relationship between history and biography in the diachrony aspect: if the process of the process is the dynamics of the process.

The isolation, autonomization and awareness of their own tasks with biography 17, then Momiliano states the opposite with satisfaction, claiming that from the 16th century. An attempt to make clarity in the relationship of the two camps, undertaken enough from the third, philosophical, is difficult to consider successful: the classification of genres made in the cityBacon, in which the object of the image becomes a criterion, is more harmonious than functional: a time is the object of Chronicles, a Person - Lives 19, An Action - Narrations Or Relations.

To imagine a story about an era devoid of persons and events is no less difficult than a story about a hero without a description of his actions and a modern era; In addition, it is precisely in relation to the texts of Plutarch, whose characters are almost always - the heroes of a large story, this scheme is especially inoperative. It is also impossible not to notice that the desire to turn into a genre criterion the subject of the image “What?

It seems that the first thing that needs to be done to speak about both the biography in general and about ancient and even more so about the Plutarch's biography is to decisively exclude autobiography from the problems in question. It is extremely indicative that, trying to combine the discussion of both genres in one study, whether it is a small report of Khubach or a whole monograph by Momiliano, the researcher inevitably becomes a victim of a peculiar law of chronological incompatibility of genre incompatibility, running away during the study from one genre to another.

Therefore, whatever the assessment of the capital work of G. Misha 21, the scientist is undoubtedly right, considering the genre autonomously to the fundamental differences between the biography and Gerreti, emphasizing the fundamental difference in the methods of the one and the other: the result of the reconstruction, autobiography - the result of memoirs 23, which preserves these memoirs and operates human memory - is not always the human memory is not always Consciously - so creatively independent force 24 that this allowed the researcher of the English autobiography to V.

Shumayker to argue that the biography and autobiography are approximately as far from each other as history and novel may be the best comparison of both genres with all his striving for the aphoricism of brevity, which indicates not only indicating the fundamental unhappy of biography of biography And autobiography, but also - very insightfully - for the main antinomy of the latter, the second one to do as it is equally necessary - to believe the antique material all the too global statements by researchers, inevitably leading to the shifting guidelines of modernization 28, which allows, for example, Ed.

Meyer to put an equal sign between Plutarch and Nick 29, causing a fair irony of F. Frost, the criteria developed by modernity and definitions often represent the inappropriate tools for working with ancient heritage. If we try to turn, for example, to one of the definitions of history in the twentieth century. The block, then, indeed, Plutarch will not be a historian in the light of this formulation, but Herodotus and Fukidid will be even less less than the historians.

In the same way, R. Folkman reasoned in the same way, claiming the illegality of the attitude towards Plutarch’s biographies as historical works “from a modern, scientific point of view” we ask ourselves: what will remain from ancient historiography, the genre “is highly rhetorical” 32 if we try to consider Vom Modernem, which have reached us, Wisseschaftlichen standpunkte aus "!

And why are all the conversations about the “historical biography” in relation to Plutarch, for which this formulation is Contradictio in Adiecto! Realizing and declaring the differences between history and biography, Plutarch is by no means an innovator: such a distinction was emphasized by representatives of both one polybia, X, 24, and another K. Pelopid, I genre, and attempts to ignore this typical look for antiquity are insolvent.

These attempts, however, were undertaken and continued to be made by Hirtzel, Barbu, Dzhanakaris and others. The Nature of Biography, p. Kleine Schriften, S. Storia Della Storiografia The Idea of ​​History, p. The Development Historik, S. Geschichte des hellenismus, i, S. From the history of the formation of a biography: genre in search of a hero. Garraty, Op. The Art of Biography, p.

However, it should be noted that the conclusion that on this basis the biography is a branch of history is still more attributed to Kendall to the criticized researcher. Kendall, op. Averintsev in conversations with the author of these lines went on and declared the inconsistency of this concept for an autobiography in general. Momigliano, op. Boden, A. Maskardi and Abbot de Mabel Dradeen remained then 78 years old.

Poetics of ancient Russian literature, p. Misha - Ya. Mikhail Psell, p. Melodies and Memories. Shumaker, English autobiography, pp. Averintsev is right, seeing in the gravity of such modernization one of the features of the Anglo -Saxon literary criticism - Plutarch and ancient biography; It seems, however, that a similar feature is largely provoked by the rich biographical tradition of English -speaking literature, which is the main object of study of this literary criticism and undoubtedly affects the method of the latter.

Forschungen Zur Alten Geschichte, II, S. Leben und Schriften de Legibus.Plutarch and ancient biography. Plutarch I An-Tichnaya Biographia. Poetics of ancient Russian literature. Poetica Drevneruskoy Literaturi. Mikhail Psell. Personality and creativity. Michail Psell. Lichnost I Tvorchestvo. Biography: Theory or History? Series "Literary criticism. BIOGRAPHIA: Teoria ili Isto-riya?

Seria "Literaturvedeniye. The Idea of ​​Historia. Storia Della Storiografia Italiana Nel Secolo XIX. Bari, Geschichte des hellenismus. Gotha, - A Historical Commentary. The Nature of Biography. International Congress Der Historischen Wissenschaften. Moskau, S. The Art of Biography. Forschungen Zur Alten Geschichte.