Upcoming this Friday, 19 January 2018:
The Biography Society Seminar welcomes:
« Biographie et Histoire. La Vita di Antonio Giacomini de Jacopo Nardi »
Maison de la recherche – Site Schuman
Aix-en-Provence
14h-17h – salle 2.44
Théa Picquet is an associate researcher at TELEMME, Aix Marseille University, and a specialist in Italian Renaissance studies.
Session 59: Eminent Victorians at One Hundred
A Session of the 2018 Conference of the Modern Language Association, jointly organized by the Division on Life Writing and the Division on Victorian and Early-20th-Century English Literature
Session Description
Anyone with a passing knowledge of twentieth-century literature is well aware of the tremendous changes that both poetic and novelistic writing experienced in the wake of World War I: the fragmentations of form; the reassessment of aesthetics; the struggle to express the shattering loss of confidence that had shaken the western world. One is likely to be less aware, however, of the parallel transformation that took place in the genre of biography — a revolution spearheaded by a single
iconoclastic volume. In its reinvention of form, in its acerbic critique of the pious follies of the century that preceded it, and in its refusal to lament the twilight of the fallen order, Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians changed the genre of biography as forcefully and irrevocably as Ulysses and The Waste Land transformed theirs. Despite his tremendous influence on literary history and life writing in our time, Strachey has not been the subject of an MLA session since 2004. 2018 marks the 100th anniversary of Eminent Victorians, and the centennial affords a unique opportunity to reflect upon the book, its author, and the Bloomsbury group at large as indispensable agents in the process by which life writing came of age. Co-sponsored by the MLA Divisions on GS Life Writing and on LLC Victorian and Early-20th-Century English, and moderated by Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer John Matteson, “Eminent Victorians at 100” observes Strachey and his contemporaries in a richly diverse variety of contexts, understanding him in his relation to the emergent literary theory of his time; in the deep resonances between his nonfiction and the biographically inspired fictions of Virginia Woolf; in his conflicted assessment of that most indispensable of Victorians, the queen herself; and in his powerful influence on continental letters through the work of his great French admirer, André Maurois. The session also looks at Strachey through the newly acquired but distorted lends of the Trump presidency, comparing Strachey’s understanding of truth with Trump’s constructed world of “alternative facts.”
The session will consist of four 15-minute presentations. It will commence with “Reconstituting Democracy: Strachey, Woolf, and Modernist National Biography.” In a paper that both navigates and subtly redraws the boundaries of genre, Ryan Weberling examines Woolf’s and Strachey’s ironic responses to the task, so diligently pursued by their fathers’ generation, of making the life of the British nation publicly legible through biography. Mr. Weberling argues that Strachey’s fictionalization of biography and Woolf’s infusion of biographical tropes and strategies into her novel Orlando were both undertaken expressly to challenge the nationalistic aspirations of biography, giving voice to interests that are pointedly feminist, foreign, undignified, and idiosyncratic. Professor Floriane Reviron- Piégay then takes Strachey’s influence in a continental direction in her paper “Lytton Strachey and André Maurois: Eminent Modernists in Search of the Biographical Truth.” Probing the friendship and intellectual interplay between Strachey and Maurois, Professor Reviron-Piégay sees Maurois as an indispensable conduit through which Strachey’s sense of irony and satire crossed the Channel and transformed life writing in French life writing between the wars.
Our third paper, Gretchen Gerzina’s “Aging Backwards: From Strachey’s Victoria to the Modern Queen” moves the reconsideration of Strachey to a less frequently considered work, his eponymous biography of Queen Victoria.
Presentations
Ryan Weberling is a doctoral candidate in the English department at Boston University, where he is also completing a graduate certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
Professor Gerzina sees in Queen Victoria a refinement of the author’s approach to life writing, a reinvention that sets aside some of the author’s penchant for acerbic wit in favor of a more nuanced and sympathetic psychological understanding. Professor Gerzina suggests that it is Strachey’s understanding of Victoria and her time that has principally informed the recent spate of cinematic depictions of the queen, such that Strachey’s Victoria is now essentially our Victoria.
Our session concludes with a gesture toward our own disconcerting political moment, as Mallory R. Cohn presents “Strachey’s Alternative Facts: Life Writing in the Face of Modern Catastrophe.” Ms. Cohn reassesses Eminent Victorians by examining his exchange of the typical strategies of a biographer for those of a novelist. Viewing Eminent Victorians through the lens of Georg Lukacs’s Theory of the Novel, Ms. Cohn observes how both Strachey and Lukacs decry the deadening force of bourgeois cultures that reduces any gesture of heroism to comedic futility. Turning her attention to the present day, Ms. Cohn will consider ways of retaining a Strachey-like approach to historical criticism, preserving a relation to truth that, while skeptical, does not descend into a post-factual nihilism.
Taken together, these papers raise compelling questions that span from the psychological to the political, from the cinematic to the sociological. They offer an invigorating new look not only at Lytton Strachey, but also at the worlds of life writing and critical thought that have been brought into being by the children’s children of his generation.
As this proposal was being finalized, word was received that Georgia Johnston, who served as chair of GS Life Writing in the year just concluded, has passed away after a long and courageous struggle with cancer. Professor Johnston, an expert on Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury, had been especially looking forward to this session on Strachey at MLA 2018. This proposal and the proposed session are respectfully dedicated to her memory.
Save the date!
The first Conference of the Biography Society, an interdisciplinary colloquium:
Affiche 4-Vérité d'une vie_HD
Image credits: Basile Moulin
https://veritebio.sciencesconf.org/
Abstract:
Biography entertains a peculiar relationship to the notion of verity, by aiming far less at the Truth than at the fluctuating truths of unique individual lives. Indeed, in science and in the humanities alike, truth appears to us today as a construction, always conveyed by a discourse ; indeed, verity is an unattainable horizon, an object of desire that keeps receding on and on as we strive to get closer to it, but the very quest ceaselessly modifies the landscape of our knowledge. The recent development of ‘biofiction’ can be interpreted as a ‘biographisation’ of contemporary fiction, which characterises our time, and is comparable to the ‘novelisation’ of genres one century ago. This phenomenon is what Hans Renders, Binne de Haan et Jonne Harmsma investigate in The Biographical Turn : Lives in History (Routledge, 2016). In historiography and philosophy of history, Hayden White’s theses, especially in The Fiction of Narrative (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), like Ivan Jablonka’s in L’Histoire est une littérature contemporaine (Seuil, 2014), clearly pose the problem of the partly fictional, and in any case literary nature of historiography. Biography, commonly described as a hybrid genre, between history and literature (see Michael Benton, Towards a Poetics of Literary Biography, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), is distinguished by a peculiar aesthetics; it is assessed (by readers, critics, and the juries of literary awards) by the double standard of the verity of the knowledge it conveys, and the quality of the style in which it expresses it. A biographer is expected, on the one hand, to administrate the proof of what she writes in her texts and paratexts, and, on the other hand, to do so while producing a text where the pleasure to read must satisfy the desire to know: where scientific quest and aesthetic experience cross-fertilize one another. The most interesting biographers are those for whom literary writing is not a mere form but their very method, the very path of their thinking towards a better understanding of their subject. Some are fascinated by the gradual metamorphoses their character goes through, others keep swinging backward and forward in the chronological unravelling of a life, unwilling to wrench their eyes from the accomplished historical personage. Mixing memory and desire, scientific truth and literary verity, biography is a peculiar field, a crossroads of humanities, where a significant turn is taking place. The biographic turn partakes of a reprise, a new start, a reorientation of writing and reading towards this verity, always surprising, of which we cannot but see that it is the text that our lives are made of. Contributions can propose theoretical reflexions on the notion of verity in biography, or case studies, interrogating for instance the political uses of biography to inflect the “truth” about a person in the eyes of the public, addressing methods of investigation and verification of the facts, or analysing literary, rhetorical, strategies of administration of the proof. They can also be studies of the paratexts (footnote, prefaces, postfaces, documentary appendixes, etc.), or of the iconographic illustrations, taking especially into account the impact of photography. Considerations on the cinema are also expected, investigating the special relationship of biographical films to historical truth. In the field of digital humanities, the truth effect of on-line biographical notices and dictionaries of biography, as well as the impact of digital tools on biographical research are a case in point. Papers should also address fictionalisation as a method of investigative construction to fill in the gaps of documentation. Proposals, in French or in English, with a provisional title, an abstract no longer than 100 words, and 5 key-words, should be sent before February 1st, 2017, to Pr Yannick Gouchan yannick.gouchan@univ-amu.fr and Pr Joanny Moulin joanny.moulin@univ-amu.fr.
Go directly to the Conference’s internet site :
https://veritebio.sciencesconf.org/
(Français)
La biographie sollicite de façon singulière la notion de vérité, en poursuivant moins la vérité que de celles de vies individuelles toutes uniques. Certes, en lettres comme en sciences, toute vérité nous apparaît désormais comme une construction, toujours portée par un discours ; certes, la vérité n’est qu’un horizon inaccessible, un objet de désir qui se dérobe au fur et à mesure qu’on s’en approche, mais cette quête modifie sans cesse le paysage de notre connaissance. Le développement actuel de la « biofiction » peut s’interpréter comme une « biographisation » du roman contemporain, caractéristique de l’époque actuelle au même titre que la « romanisation » des genres au début siècle dernier. Ce phénomène est ce que Hans Renders, Binne de Haan et Jonne Harmsma nomment « le tournant biographique », dans The Biographical Turn : Lives in History (Routledge, 2016). En philosophie de l’histoire, les thèses de Hayden White, particulièrement dans son ouvrage le plus récent, The Fiction of Narrative (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), comme celles d’Ivan Jablonka dans L’Histoire est une littérature contemporaine (Seuil, 2014), posent clairement le problème de la nature en partie fictionnelle et en tout cas littéraire de l’écriture de l’historiographie. La biographie, genre communément décrit comme hybride entre histoire et littérature (voir Michael Benton, Towards a Poetics of Literary Biography, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) se distingue par une esthétique particulière. Elle est évaluée (par le public, par la critique et par les jurys des prix littéraires) d’après le double standard de la justesse des connaissances qu’elle contient, et de la qualité du style dans lequel elle les exprime. On attend d’un biographe, d’une part, qu’il administre la preuve de ce qu’il avance dans son texte et ses paratextes, et d’autre part qu’il le fasse en produisant un texte où le plaisir de lire doit satisfaire le désir de savoir : où quête scientifique et expérience esthétique se fécondent l’une l’autre. Les biographes les plus intéressants sont ceux pour qui l’écriture littéraire n’est pas un outil formel, c’est leur méthode même, le chemin qu’emprunte la pensée pour mieux connaître et faire connaître leur sujet. Certains sont fascinés par les métamorphoses successives de leur personnage, d’autres font d’incessantes incursions dans son avenir, gardant toujours sous les yeux la personnalité accomplie. De vérité scientifique en vérité littéraire, la biographie est un champ bien particulier, au carrefour des lettres et des sciences humaines, où un tournant significatif semble bien se produire. Le tournant biographique participe d’une reprise, d’une relance, d’une réorientation de l’écriture et de la lecture vers cette « vérité » toujours surprenante, dont nous voyons bien qu’elle est le texte dont nos vies sont faites. Les contributions pourront proposer des réflexions théoriques sur la notion de vérité en biographie, ou bien des études de cas, interrogeant par exemple les utilisations politiques de la biographie, visant à infléchir la « vérité » d’une personne telle que le public la perçoit ; considérations sur les méthodes d’investigation et de vérification des faits dans les recherches, analyses des stratégies littéraires, rhétoriques et discursives, d’administration de la preuve. Il pourrait s’agir aussi d’analyses des paratextes et de leur valeur vérificative (notes, avant-propos et postfaces, annexes documentaires, etc.), ou des images illustratives et de l’impact de la photographie. On attend également des considérations sur la biographie au cinéma et le rapport du film biographique (ou biopic) à la vérité historique. Dans le domaine des humanités numériques, on s’interrogera sur l’effet de vérité des notices biographiques et dictionnaires biographiques en ligne, et l’impact des outils numériques de recherche biographique. D’autres contributions encore étudieront la fictionnalisation comme méthode de construction investigatrice pour pallier les lacunes de la documentation. Les propositions, en français ou en anglais, comprenant un titre provisoire, un abstract de 100 mots et 5 mots-clés, sont à remettre avant le 1er février 2016 au Pr Yannick Gouchan yannick.gouchan@univ-amu.fr et au Pr Joanny Moulin joanny.moulin@univ-amu.fr.
Last summer, France lost two renowned biographers:
Max Gallo (1932 – July 2017)
Biographer, writer, historian, politician, member of the Académie française.
Biographies: Maximilien Robespierre, histoire d’une solitude (1968), Garibaldi, la force d’un destin(1982), Le Grand Jaurès (1984), Jules Vallès (1988), Napoléon I, II, III, IV (1997), De Gaulle I, II, III, IV (1998), Une Femme rebelle : vie et mort de Rosa Luxembourg (2000), Victor Hugo I, II (2001), César Impérator, 2003, Louis XIV I, II (2007), « Moi, j’écris pour agir » Vie de Voltaire (2008), Henri IV, un roi français (2016)
Gonzague Saint Bris (1948 – Aug. 2017)
Biographer, writer, journalist.
Biographies: Desaix, le sultan de Bonaparte (1995), Alfred de Vigny ou la Volupté et l’honneur (1998), Agnès Sorel, beauté royale(1998), Le Sacre… et Bonaparte devint Napoléon (1999), La Grande Vie d’Alexandre Dumas (2001), Sur les pas de George Sand (2004), Sur les pas de Jules Verne (2005), Léonard ou le génie du Roi au Clos Lucé (2005), Sur les pas de Léonard de Vinci(2006), La Fayette (2006), François Ier et la Renaissance (2008), La Malibran (2009), Henry IV et la France réconciliée (2009), Au paradis avec Michael Jackson (2010), Alfred de Musset (2010), Balzac – Une vie de roman (2011), Rosa Bonheur (2012), En tête à tête avec Victor Hugo (2012), Louis XIV et le Grand Siècle (2012), Marquis de Sade – L’ange de l’ombre (2013), Le goût de Stendhal (2014), Louis XI, le méconnu, Albin Michel (2015).
Coming up soon is our international workshop “(Re-) Constructing lives” at the SAES Conference, hosted this year by the University of Reims from 1-3 June.
Click below for details and programme
http://biographysociety.org/2017/04/12/saes-workshop-re-constructing-lives-1-3-june/
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