A Modern Poetics of Biography

Leon Edel gives Yang Zhengrun the idea for the English title of the book

Yang Zhengrun 杨正润. Xiandai zhuanji xue 现代传记学 (A Modern Poetics of Biography). Nanjing, China: Nanjing University Press, May 2009.

Since I last posted on this book, I've gone through the introduction and gotten a bit fuller idea of what the author is trying to do. At the very least, one of the striking features of the work is that it will enable me to prepare a bibliography of sources in English on the subject of biographical criticism. Whether it can help me more than that by giving me an accurate account of all such sources is something I'll have to try and determine along the way. What I'm picturing now is that I'll slowly read this entire book while casting my eyes over many of the books it mentions, building a dissertation bibliography as I go.

Books Mentioned in the Introduction:

Maurois, André. Aspects of Biography. New York, Ungar, 1966 [1957].

Clifford, James. Biography as an Art: Selected Criticism, 1560-1960. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962.

Schiff, Hilda. Contemporary approaches to English studies. London ;New York: Heinemann Educational for the English Association ;;Barnes & Noble Books, 1977.

Edel, Leon. Writing Lives : Principia Biographica. New York: Norton, 1984.

Nadel, Ira. Biography : fiction, fact, and form. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984.

Epstein, William. Recognizing biography. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987.

Epstein, William. Contesting the subject : essays in the postmodern theory and practice of biography and biographical criticism. West Lafayette Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1991.

Folkenflik, Robert. The Culture of autobiography : constructions of self-representation. Stanford Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993.

Ellis, David. Imitating art : essays in biography. London ;;Boulder Colo.: Pluto Press, 1994.

Hogan, Joseph. "Life Writing Canon and Traditions," Auto/Biography Studies, Vol. Fal 1994, p. 163.