The biographical fallacy is a term used in cultural criticism to critique the view that works of creative art, literature or music can be interpreted as reflections of the life of their authors.[1] Along with the intentional fallacy, the term was introduced by exponents of the New Criticism who wished to emphasise that artworks should be interpreted and assessed as constructed artifacts rather than expressions of the emotions of specific individuals. The term is thus used to criticize the school of literary interpretation called biographical criticism.
The argument arose from the increasing tendency of critics during the 19th century to view artworks in terms of the life experiences of their creators, whether their personal lives, or the wider historical conditions represented in the artist's world view, a claim associated with critics such as Hippolyte Taine.[2]
This position[1] was referred to as a "fallacy" on the grounds that it neglected both the purely imaginative aspects of the arts and their reliance on formal conventions and rules of genre. Thus James M. Thomas writes of the fallacy applied to drama that,
This type of approach distances itself from the play and goes instead into the playwright's biography to find people, places and things that seem to be similar to features in the play. And then it claims that the play is actually a picture of these people, places and things. In its extreme form this is fallacy because it does not consider that playwrights use their imagination when they write and that they can imagine improbable or even impossible things.[3]
Robert S. Miola, Professor of English at Loyola College in Maryland, discusses the biographical fallacy as "the unqualified conviction that one can read the author's life from the work and vice versa", and adds:
This fallacy is widespread in Shakespeare studies, true enough, but the business of wrenching passages out of dramatic context as evidence of the playwright's personal beliefs usually reveals more about the critic than about Shakespeare. [4]
Commenting further on the fallacy as applied to contemporary work about Shakespeare, Joseph Pearce asserts that "For the proponents of ‘queer theory' he becomes conveniently homosexual; for secular fundamentalists he is a proto-secularist, ahead of his time; for ‘post-Christian' agnostics he becomes a prophet of modernity.” [5]
Others consider the term offensive and defend biographical criticism in its non-extreme forms, finding that full understanding of an author's works is not possible without extrinsic sources. Leon Edel in his book Literary Biography[6] devoted a chapter to defending biographical criticism.[7] While admitting the excesses of certain earlier critics‘ use of biography,[8] he rigorously stated that "no critic, I hold, can explicate—the very word implies this—anything without alluding to something else [outside the work]."[9]
The term inverted autobiography is also applied to the practice.[10]
^Winslow, Donald J. (1995). Life-writing: a glossary of terms in biography, autobiography, and related forms (2 ed.). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. p. 7.
^Wolfenstein, Martha, "The Social Background of Taine's Philosophy of Art," Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 5, No. 3. (1944), 335.
^ Thomas, James, Script Analysis for Actors, Directors, and Designers, Focal Press, 2009, p,xxxix.
^"Thy Canonized Bones | First Things". Archived from the original on 2010-01-22. Retrieved 2010-03-03.
^The Quest For Shakespeare: The Bard of Avon and the Church of Rome"Thy Canonized Bones | First Things". Archived from the original on 2010-01-22. Retrieved 2010-03-03.
^Edel Leon (1957) Literary Biography University of Toronto Press, Toronto, OCLC 1027892
The biographicalfallacy is a term used in cultural criticism to critique the view that works of creative art, literature or music can be interpreted as...
19th century biographical criticism came under disapproval by the so-called New Critics of the 1920s, who coined the term "biographicalfallacy" to describe...
19th century biographical criticism came under disapproval by the so-called New Critics of the 1920s, who coined the term "biographicalfallacy" to describe...
importance, have labelled this position the intentional fallacy and count it among the informal fallacies. There are actually two types of Intentionalism: Actual...
criticism. It was Wimsatt who gave the idea of intentional and affective fallacy. Also very influential were the critical essays of T. S. Eliot, such as...
2020. Klinger III, p. 40—A Study in Scarlet Bennett, Bo. "Pseudo-Logical Fallacies". Logicallyfallacious.com. Logically Fallacious. Archived from the original...
did bear any conformity, it could never be known. Definist / Socratic fallacy This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chambers...
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S2CID 242423709. Lin, Derek (29 December 2016), "The "Ancient Child" Fallacy", Taoism.net Ames, Roger T.; Kaltenmark, Max (2009). "Laozi". Britannica...
Historians' Fallacies : Toward a Logic of Historical Thought Brandeis University History Department Faculty Page David Hackett Fischer, biographical sketch...
distracting. In another essay, "The Affective Fallacy", which served as a kind of sister essay to "The Intentional Fallacy" Wimsatt and Beardsley also discounted...
how typical something is. Misuse of anecdotal evidence is an informal fallacy. When used in advertising or promotion of a product, service, or idea,...
"Statement on Race", and his very well known Man's Most Dangerous Myth: the Fallacy of Race. He was particularly opposed to the work of Carleton S. Coon, and...
conventional wisdom (such as old wives' tales), stereotypes, superstitions, fallacies, a misunderstanding of science, or the popularization of pseudoscience...
Steven Novella The Demonologist Page on the Warrens – contains brief biographical information Ed Warren at IMDb Lorraine Warren at IMDb JREF reprint of...
Publishing Company, 1993), 254+XII Pp., ISBN 9780812692365. Fads and Fallacies in the Social Sciences (Amherst and New York, New York: Humanity Books...
on 4 February 2012. Retrieved 14 September 2017. Andre Geim (2010). "Biographical". Nobelprize.org. Archived from the original on 16 June 2017. Retrieved...
Johnson spelled her middle name May on her enlistment form. The second fallacy typically published is her age when she enlisted. Although many report...
Michigan Press. p. 95. ISBN 9780472119677. Stokes, Henry Scott (2017). Fallacies in the Allied Nations' Historical Perception as Observed by a British...
contrition and weariness." In statistics, the garden of forking paths fallacy refers to how making a series of decisions along a large decision tree...
May 2023. Retrieved 19 May 2023. Chandra, Saurabh (21 August 2013). "The fallacy of 'dollar = rupee' in 1947". Archived from the original on 21 August 2013...
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right of the more powerful. The modern era has corrected this unethical fallacy, but while breaking with the alleged right of the more powerful one, the...
Another story "Sundarkayecho Upasaka" (The Aesthetist ), is about the fallacy of a wealthy man who claims to have aesthetic wisdom. The ambiance of this...
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