简析传记作品的文学属性及其文学价值(英文)

2  The attribute of biography
The famous biographer Hamilton asked: “Where does fact end and interpretation begin? Is biography a branch of history or an art of human portraitures?”[3] This question is still an important argument in the studies of biographical character nowadays. Looking back on the history of biographical studies, we find which branch biographical character belongs to is the main point of the studies. Here, the author puts forwards the interpretation of biographical character.
2. 1 The two main attributes of biography
2. 1. 1 The history attribute of biography
When there is human civilization there is biography and it has developed rapidly with the development of human civilization. Through the development of itself, there is always an ambiguous expression of its character. Before 19 century, domestic and western biographical theorist all thought that the biography belonged to the branch of history[4]. The main point of their arguments is that the biography is about the history of an individual one, the biographers should “create” the biographee in a subject way, the details of biographee’s life in the book should be based on the truth. They claimed that every statement or description of the biographees should have evidence in real life. No fabrication, no exaggeration. Of course, even in this period, the 21st century, there are still many biographical theorists who think that the biography is still a branch of history because the biographees in the works are all real images appearing in this real world[5]. This means that the targets of biographical works have existed or still are existing around us. Creating biographies for these people is creating something about history. Therefore, the production should accord with the history itself. The biographers have responsibility to respect the “truth as the subject saw it”. These are all about the biographical character of reality.
2. 1. 2 The literature attribute of biography
The other class of biographical theorists holds the point that biography belongs to literature category. Since the beginning of nine-tenth century, some of western theorists started to study the literature character about biography. They began to focus on the literature art of biographical works. In this category, people believed that biography works are the literature art of human being’s life, especially the individual one’s. Since the human being’s life is the noblest one in this world, therefore, the literature works which are about human beings must be the noblest writings upon the earth. Because the individual life must have its specialty which differs from the whole human community, the biography about individual life must have the unique attraction which the historic works of human beings can not be compared with. As these concerned, biography turns to a piece of art of an individual one. Just as the famous biographer Andre Maurois raised: “The biographer should pick the essential thing out from the entirety just like what the portraiture artists do, in this way, he will play an important role as an artist in biography creation.” [6] According to these statements, we can notice that in this class people allow biographers to take help of literature skills, such as literature language and environment, to design the biographical creations. These are all about the literature character of biography.
Both of these two main arguments of biographical character have their points. But in the author’s opinion, the consensus amongst them can be reached. We might know the difference between biography and other literature fictions is the reality of biography. We should respect this basic thing of biography, which we mean the historic reality. We have to take priority to show the truth not imagination. But here we can not say we should sacrifice the literature art of biography for historic reality, or we can not say the literature art is not subject or real. We emphasize the importance of respecting the historic truth, but this does not mean the literature art should be based on reality but should be superior to it. Through the art of biographical literary, we might find a world which is full of more noble and typical human spirit than the normal real one around us. This is a world which filled with representative reality. The creation of literature art does not the fabrication, which is far away from the truth of life. Here, reality and literature art of biography can be and should be mixed together properly.转贴于 酷文网-论文下载中心 http://www.coolwen.net