Fear of Theory

Towards a New Theoretical Justification of Biography
Erscheinungsjahr 2021
ISBN: 978-90-04-49854-9
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 3, 276 Seiten, Format (B × H): 162 mm x 238 mm, Gewicht: 561 g

Reihe: Biography Studies

Listen to the podcast here.

Recent academic historiography has seen a profusion of theoretical perspectives on biography, both analytical and descriptive. Yet many biographers still fear ‘theory’ as antithetical to accessible narration of real lives.

This volume presents eighteen essays by more than a dozen scholars and practitioners from Australia, Belgium, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Hungary, Iceland, and the United States who seek to banish such fear. Writing with candor, wide experience and familiarity with modern teaching, they examine the riches greeting the biographer willing to think more deeply about biography: its inner workings and rationale in a world still hungry for fact and truth.

Contributors are: Nigel Hamilton, Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon, Emma McEwin, Melanie Nolan, Kerstin Maria Pahl, Eric Palmen, Hans Renders, Carl Rollyson, David T. Roth, István M. Szijártó, Jeffrey Tyssens, and David Veltman.

See inside the book.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Renders, Hans

Veltman, David

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein Biographien & Autobiographien: Historisch, Politisch, Militärisch
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein Geschichtswissenschaft: Theorie und Methoden

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Notes on Contributors

Foreword: Scaffolding a House: Biography and the Role of Chance in a Life

Guðni Thorlacius Jóhannesson

Section 1: Reflections on Theory and Biography

1 The Deep-Rooted Fear of Theory Among Biographers

Hans Renders

2 The Missing Key: Theorizing Modern Historical Biography

Nigel Hamilton

3 ‘Have They Caught the Cambridge Structuralist Yet?’ Biography Writing and the Fear of Theory

Jeffrey Tyssens

4 Biography and Emotional Practice

Kerstin Maria Pahl

5 The Great Individual in History: Historicising Historian’s Biographical Practice

Melanie Nolan

6 The Backside of the Biography: Microhistory as a Research Tool

Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon

Section 2: Case Studies

7 Beyond Verification and Falsification: Biography as Go-Between of Historical Truth

Eric Palmen

8 History That Addresses Biography: Ethics and the Vatican

Hans Renders

9 Brief Lives: A Microhistorical Approach

David T. Roth

10 ‘Une génération spontanée’: Kandinsky Seen Through the Eyes of Felix de Boeck (1898–1995)

David Veltman

11 Template for a Biography: What’s the Sense of Theory

Hans Renders

12 Building a Better Biography

Carl Rollyson

13 Capturing the Subject: Virginia Woolf ’s Battle with Biographical Boundaries

Emma McEwin

Section 3: Dossier on Microhistory

14 The Representativeness of a Reputation: A ‘Third Wave’ in Microhistory

Hans Renders and David Veltman

15 The Devil Is in the Detail: What Is a ‘Great Historical Question’?

Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon

16 Arguments for Microhistory 2.0

István M. Szijártó

17 Exceptions That Prove the Rule: Biography, Microhistory and Marginals

Hans Renders

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Hans Renders is Professor in History and Theory of Biography at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands). He has written two biographies and has published on biographical theory in various international journals. He is Editor-in-Chief of the series Biography Studies.

David Veltman has a PhD from the University of Groningen. His dissertation, a biography of the artist Felix de Boeck, was written at the Biography Institute. He has published before in Biography. An Interdisciplinary Quarterly.