What Is a Biographical Approach to Literary Criticism? What Is Literary Criticism? Biographical Approach The Author’s Life and Beliefs Tips for Using the

What Is a Biographical Approach to Literary Criticism?

What Is Literary Criticism?

Biographical Approach

The Author’s Life and Beliefs

Tips for Using the Biographical Approach

Supporting Biographical Criticism

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To engage in literary criticism, you must

• analyze, evaluate, and respond to a piece of literature


• use evidence from the text to support your claims

There are many “lenses” through which you can view a work of fiction. For example:

• Feminist criticism notes whether the work treats women in a balanced way or presents them as stereotypes.


• Historical criticism looks at the work as a product of a particular historical period.

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The biographical approach to literary criticism, or biographical criticism, examines the way a writer’s work reflects his or her

background



experiences beliefs

To use a biographical approach in literary criticism, you need to learn about the writer’s biography, or life story.

• Research facts about the writer, including interviews and quotations.


• Try to understand the writer’s

• heritage, or background

• traditions, attitudes, and beliefs


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Manuel in “La Bamba”

Writers’ lives often influence their subject matter.

• Characters may reflect their authors’ heritage and beliefs


However, fiction is not autobiography.

• but the characters are not identical with their authors.

author Gary Soto

Writers use their knowledge of situations, people, and emotions to create realistic characters and scenes.

However, they also use their imaginations.

Author: Gary Paulsen

Knowledge: trained and raced sled dogs in Alaska; experienced harsh conditions

Knowledge + Imagination: wrote about a boy stranded in the Canadian wilderness


Sometimes, writers invent characters and situations that seem unrelated to their—or anyone’s!—experiences.

• Yet in some way, the writer is writing about something he or she knows: for example, human hopes, dreams, or fears.

fear of the unknown


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Here are some tips for using a biographical approach in literary criticism.


1. Do not assume that a fictional character, especially one who narrates the story and speaks as “I,” is the writer.

2. When you wonder if something in a work reflects the writer’s heritage or background, check a biography of the writer to be sure your hunch is correct.



3. Be specific in citing connections between the work and the writer’s life. Don’t assume that, because the main characters in the writer’s works tend to be rebels or outsiders, the writer must be a rebel. Sometimes writers like to write about the kind of people they wish they had been.



4. Do not ignore the part played by the writer’s imagination. Do not assume that every realistic detail in the story is based on fact. A good writer does not have to be a man in order to writer about male characters, nor a police officer to write about crime.

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Poor literary criticism begins and ends with remarks like these:

I hated it.

I was a little bored.

It was great.

In biographical criticism, you have to support every claim you make.

• details from the text

You support your claims with

• facts about the writer’s life


Following is an example of an appropriate biographical criticism of a novel. The criticism works because the writer

• researched facts about the life of author Sandra Cisneros

• tells us specifically how the novel reflects those facts of the writer’s life



The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is shaped by the writer’s own experiences growing up in a Mexican American family in a Chicago barrio. The house in the book’s title probably refers to the house the Cisneros family purchased when Sandra was young; Sandra hated the house because she thought it was ugly and old. In the same way, the girl in the novel hates the house her family has moved into, which is also in a Chicago barrio.

An appropriate biographical criticism of a novel:


The main character, Esperanza (for “hope”), a determined but sensitive little girl, is clearly based on Cisneros herself. Esperanza uses writing as a way of escaping Mango Street in her imagination. Sandra Cisneros actually did escape her neighborhood by writing successful books.



There is another similarity: The women on Mango Street, including Esperanza, are dominated by men. Some of the women characters in the novel never seem to leave their homes. In the same way, Cisneros fought to be independent of the men who dominated her own life. She was the only girl in a family of seven children.


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Quick CheckI woke up at 6AM without having set the alarm. It was just another Saturday morning—except that I was thirteen instead of twelve, and I was on a military base in Germany instead of at home in my own bed. At least we’d been able to bring my cat Paulie with us.

As if to show her annoyance, Paulie stalked across the bed and bit my ear.

“Ow!” I yelled. “Is that your idea of a birthday greeting?”

What Is a Biographical Approach to Literary Criticism?

the writerthe narrator

a minor character

You can be sure that the “I” in this story is

How might you find out if the author lived in Germany as a teenager?

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Using the Biographical Approach

Choose one of the following stories from your textbook:

• “The Treasure of Lemon Brown” by Walter Dean Myers or

• “An Hour with Abuelo” by Judith Ortiz Cofer

Your Turn

Read the selection as well as the accompanying author biography. Discuss how the work reflects the writer’s heritage, traditions, attitudes, and beliefs.

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