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BIOGRAPHY AND FICTION Maria Antónia Oliveira |
Unlike fiction, there is no «willed suspension of disbelief» in biography. We expect a biography to relate the truth about a certain individual, and that it should reflect the most intimate and true side of a personality. There are however many and diverse types of relationships between a biography and a work of fiction that this article seeks to point out. Based on Virginia Woolf’s theories on biography, this text proposes a reflection on the evolution of the genre compared with the novel. A brief abstract of the actual situation of criticism is then made regarding the links between the biography as a factual narrative and the fictional narrative, with references to the personal experience of the author as the biographer of the poet Alexandre O’Neill. |
32 Fictions July 2003