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

2. What Is Literary Criticism?
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 2

3. What Is Literary Criticism?
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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4. What Is Literary Criticism?
Biographical Approach
The biographical approach to literary criticism, or biographical criticism, examines the way a writer’s work reflects his or her
background
experiences
beliefs 4

5. What Is Literary Criticism?
Biographical Approach
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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6. The Author’s Life and Beliefs
Writers’ lives often influence their subject matter.
However, fiction is not autobiography.
Characters may reflect their authors’ heritage and beliefs
Manuel in “La Bamba”
author Gary Soto
but the characters are not identical with their authors. 6

7. The Author’s Life and Beliefs
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 7

8. The Author’s Life and Beliefs
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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9. Tips for Using the Biographical Approach
Here are some tips for using a biographical approach in literary criticism.
Do not assume that a fictional character, especially one who narrates the story and speaks as “I,” is the writer.
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. 9

10. Tips for Using the Biographical Approach
Here are some tips for using a biographical approach in literary criticism.
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. 10

11. Tips for Using the Biographical Approach
Here are some tips for using a biographical approach in literary criticism.
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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12. Supporting Biographical Criticism
Poor literary criticism begins and ends with remarks like these:
I was a little bored.
I hated it.
It was great. 12

13. Supporting Biographical Criticism
In biographical criticism, you have to support every claim you make.
You support your claims with
details from the text
facts about the writer’s life 13

14. Supporting Biographical Criticism
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 14

15. Supporting Biographical Criticism
An appropriate biographical criticism of a novel:
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. 15

16. Supporting Biographical Criticism
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. 16

17. Supporting Biographical Criticism
An appropriate biographical criticism of a novel:
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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18. What Is a Biographical Approach to Literary Criticism?
Quick Check
You can be sure that the “I” in this story is
I 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?”
the writer
the narrator
a minor character
How might you find out if the author lived in Germany as a teenager?
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19. What Is a Biographical Approach to Literary Criticism?
Quick Check
You can be sure that the “I” in this story is
I 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?”
the writer
the narrator
a minor character

20. What Is a Biographical Approach to Literary Criticism?
Quick Check
How might you find out if the author lived in Germany as a teenager?
I 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?”
You might look in your local library or on the Internet for biographical information about the writer.

21. Using the Biographical Approach
Your Turn
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
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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22. The End