Literature: NON-FICTION PROSE

I. BIOGRAPHY AND
AUTOBIOGRAPHY

I. A. BIOGRAPHY
 A biography or simply
bio is a detailed
description or account of
a person's life.
It entails more than
basic facts like
education, work,
relationships, and
death—a biography also
portrays a subject's
experience of these
events.

HISTORY OF BIOGRAPHY
At first, biographical writings were regarded merely as
a subsection of history with a focus on a particular individual
of historical importance.
The independent genre of biography as distinct from
general history writing, began to emerge in the 18th century
and reached its contemporary form at the turn of the 20th
century.

One of the earliest biographers was Plutarch, and his
Parallel Lives, published about 80 A.D., covers prominent
figures in the classical world. In 44 B.C. Cornelius Nepos
published a biographical work, his Vitae Imperatorum (“Lives
of Commanders”).
In the early Middle Ages (AD 400 to 1450), the only
repositories of knowledge and records of the early history in
Europe were those of the Roman Catholic Church. Hermits,
monks, and priests used this historic period to write
biographies. Their subjects were usually restricted to the
church fathers, martyrs, popes, and saints. Their works were
meant to be inspirational to the people and vehicles for
conversion to Christianity. One significant secular example of
a biography from this period is the life of Charlemagne by his
courtier Einhard.

In Medieval Islamic Civilization (c. AD 750 to 1258),
similar traditional Muslim biographies of Muhammad and
other important figures in the early history of Islam began to
be written, beginning the Prophetic biography tradition.
Early biographical dictionaries were published as
compendia of famous Islamic personalities from the 9th
century onwards. The earliest biographical dictionaries
initially focused on the lives of the prophets of Islam and their
companions, with one of these early examples being The Book
of The Major Classes by Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi. John Foxe's
The Book of Martyrs, was one of the earliest English-language
biographies.

By the late Middle Ages, biographies became less
church-oriented in Europe as biographies of kings, knights,
and tyrants began to appear. The most famous of such
biographies was Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory.
The book was an account of the life of the fabled King
Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Following Malory,
the new emphasis on humanism during the Renaissance
promoted a focus on secular subjects, such as artists and poets,
and encouraged writing in the vernacular.

I. B. AUTOBIOGRAPHY
 An autobiography is a
written account of the life
of a person written by
that person, sometimes
with the assistance of a
collaborator or
ghostwriter.

ORIGIN OF THE TERM
The word 'autobiography' was first used deprecatingly
by William Taylor in 1797 in the English periodical the
Monthly Review, when he suggested the word as a hybrid but
condemned it as 'pedantic'; but its next recorded use was in its
present sense by Robert Southey in 1809.
The form of autobiography however goes back to
antiquity. An autobiography may be based entirely on the
writer's memory. Closely associated with autobiography (and
sometimes difficult to precisely distinguish from it) is the form
of memoir.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY THROUGH THE AGES
In antiquity such works were typically entitled
apologia, purporting to be self-justification rather than self-
documentation. John Henry Newman's autobiography (first
published in 1864) is entitled Apologia Pro Vita Sua in
reference to this tradition.
The pagan rhetor Libanius (c. 314–394) framed his life
memoir (Oration I begun in 374) as one of his orations, not of
a public kind, but of a literary kind that could not be aloud in
privacy.
Augustine (354–430) applied the title Confessions to
his autobiographical work, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau used
the same title in the 18th century, initiating the chain of
confessional and sometimes racy and highly self-critical,
autobiographies of the Romantic era and beyond.
In the spirit of Augustine's Confessions is the 12th-
century Historia Calamitatum of Peter Abelard, outstanding as

EARLY AUTOBIOGRAPHIES
The first autobiographical work in Islamic society was
written in the late 11th century, by Abdallah ibn Buluggin, last
Zirid king of Granada.
In the 15th century, Leonor López de Córdoba, a
Spanish noblewoman, wrote her Memorias, which may be the
first autobiography in Castillian.
Zāhir ud-Dīn Mohammad Bābur, who founded the
Mughal dynasty of South Asia kept a journal Bāburnāma
(Chagatai/Persian: ‫نامہ‬ ‫;بابر‬ literally: "Book of Babur" or
"Letters of Babur") which was written between 1493 and
1529.

One of the first great autobiographies of the
Renaissance is that of the sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto
Cellini (1500–1571), written between 1556 and 1558, and
entitled by him simply Vita (Italian: Life). He declares at the
start: "No matter what sort he is, everyone who has to his
credit what are or really seem great achievements, if he cares
for truth and goodness, ought to write the story of his own life
in his own hand; but no one should venture on such a splendid
undertaking before he is over forty."

The earliest known autobiography in English is the
early 15th-century Book of Margery Kempe, describing among
other things her pilgrimage to the Holy Land and visit to
Rome. The book remained in manuscript and was not
published until 1936.
Notable English autobiographies of the 17th century
include those of Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1643, published
1764) and John Bunyan (Grace Abounding to the Chief of
Sinners, 1666).

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY?
 A biography is a book giving
an account of a person
considered famous or a
celebrity written by another
person other than themselves.
 Biography is when I write the
story of your life.
 A biography is the story of
one person's life.
 Biography-when someone
else writes a book on
someone's life.
 An autobiography is a book
written by a person on their own
life.
 Autobiography is when YOU
write the story of your life.
 An autobiography is a biography
told by the person to whom the
biography is about.
 Autobiographies-when the main
character wrote the book.
Biography: Autobiography:

II. LETTERS (EPISTLES), DIARIES,
JOURNALS

II. A. LETTERS
 A letter is a written
message from one party
to another containing
information. Letters have
been sent since antiquity
and are mentioned in the
Iliad by Homer (lived
around 7th or 8th
centuries B.C.) and works
by both Herodotus and
Thucydides mention
letters.

HISTORY OF LETTER WRITING
Historically, letters have existed from the time of
ancient India, ancient Egypt and Sumer, through Rome,
Greece and China, up to the present day. Letters make up
several of the books of the Bible. Archives of correspondence,
whether for personal, diplomatic, or business reasons, serve as
primary sources for historians. At certain times, the writing of
letters has risen to be an art form and a genre of literature, for
instance in Byzantine epistolography.
In the ancient world letters were written on a various
different materials, including metal, lead, wax-coated wooden
tablets, pottery fragments, animal skin, and papyrus. From
Ovid, we learn that Acontius used an apple for his letter to
Cydippe.

HISTORY OF LETTER WRITING
As communication technology has diversified, posted
letters have become less important as a routine form of
communication. For example, the development of the
telegraph drastically shortened the time taken to send a
communication, by sending it between distant points as an
electrical signal. At the telegraph office closest to the
destination, the signal was converted back into writing on
paper and delivered to the recipient. The next step was the
telex which avoided the need for local delivery. Then followed
the fax (facsimile) machine: a letter could be transferred
electrically from the sender to the receiver through the
telephone network as an image.
Today, the internet, by means of email, plays a large
part in written communications; however, these email
communications are not generally referred to as letters but
rather as e-mail (or email) messages, messages or simply
emails or e-mails, with the term "letter" usually being reserved

ADVANTAGES OF LETTERS
Despite email, letters are still popular, particularly in
business and for official communications. Letters have several
advantages over email:
 No special device is needed to receive a letter, just a postal
address, and the letter can be read immediately on receipt.
 An advertising mailing can reach every address in a
particular area.
 A letter provides an immediate, and in principle permanent,
physical record of a communication, without the need for
printing.
 Letters in the sender's own handwriting are less impersonal
than an e-mail.
 If required, small physical objects can be enclosed in the
envelope with the letter.

II. B. DIARIES
 A diary is a record (originally
in handwritten format) with
discrete entries arranged by
date reporting on what has
happened over the course of
a day or other period. A
personal diary may include a
person's experiences, and/or
thoughts or feelings,
including comment on
current events outside the
writer's direct experience.
Someone who keeps a diary
is known as a diarist.

HISTORY OF DIARY WRITING
The oldest extant diaries come from Middle Eastern
and East Asian cultures, although the even earlier work To
Myself (Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν), written in Greek by the Roman
Emperor Marcus Aurelius in the second half of the 2nd
century AD, already displays many characteristics of a diary.
Pillowbooks of Japanese court ladies and Asian travel
journals offer some aspects of this genre of writing, although
they rarely consist exclusively of diurnal records. The scholar
Li Ao (9th century AD), for example, kept a diary of his
journey through southern China.

HISTORY OF DIARY WRITING
In the medieval Near East, Arabic diaries were written
from before the 10th century. The earliest surviving diary of
this era which most resembles the modern diary was that of
Ibn Banna in the 11th century. His diary is the earliest known
to be arranged in order of date (ta'rikh in Arabic), very much
like modern diaries.
The precursors of the diary in the modern sense
include daily notes of medieval mystics, concerned mostly
with inward emotions and outward events perceived as
spiritually important (e.g. Elizabeth of Schönau, Agnes
Blannbekin, and perhaps also, in the lost vernacular account of
her visions, Beatrice of Nazareth).

II. C. JOURNALS
A journal has several related
meanings:
 a daily record of events or business; a
private journal is usually referred to as
a diary
 a newspaper or other periodical, in the
literal sense of one published each day
 many publications issued at stated
intervals, such as magazines, or
scholarly journals, academic journals,
or the record of the transactions of a
society, are often called journals.
The word "journalist", for one
whose business is writing for the public
press and nowadays also other media,

III. BOOK REVIEW
A book review is a
form of literary criticism in
which a book is analyzed based
on content, style, and merit. A
book review can be a primary
source opinion piece, summary
review or scholarly review.
Books can be reviewed
for printed periodicals,
magazines and newspapers, as
school work, or for book web
sites on the internet.

IV. LITERARY CRITICISM
Literary criticism is
the study, evaluation, and
interpretation of literature.
Modern literary criticism is
often informed by literary
theory, which is the
philosophical discussion of its
methods and goals.
Though the two
activities are closely related,
literary critics are not always,
and have not always been,
theorists.

HISTORY OF LITERARY CRITICISM
Literary criticism has probably
existed for as long as literature. In the 4th
century BC Aristotle wrote the Poetics, a
typology and description of literary forms
with many specific criticisms of
contemporary works of art. Poetics
developed for the first time the concepts of
mimesis and catharsis, which are still
crucial in literary study.
Plato's attacks on poetry as
imitative, secondary, and false were
formative as well. Around the same time,
Bharata Muni, in his Natya Shastra, wrote
literary criticism on ancient Indian
literature and Sanskrit drama.

HISTORY OF LITERARY CRITICISM
Later classical and medieval
criticism often focused on religious texts,
and the several long religious traditions of
hermeneutics and textual exegesis have had
a profound influence on the study of secular
texts.
This was particularly the case for
the literary traditions of the three
Abrahamic religions: Jewish literature,
Christian literature and Islamic literature.

V. SCIENTIFIC & CURRENT
PUBLICATION

V. PUBLICATION
To publish is to make
content available to the general
public. It is usually applied to
text, images, or other audio-
visual content on any
traditional medium, including
paper (newspapers, magazines,
catalogs, etc.).
The word publication
means the act of publishing,
and also refers to any printed
copies.

TYPES OF SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS
Scientific literature can include the following
kinds of publications:
 scientific articles published in scientific
journals
 patents specialized for science and
technology
 books wholly written by one or a small
number of co-authors
 presentations at academic conferences,
especially those organized by learned
societies
 government reports
 scientific publications on the World Wide
Web
 books, technical reports, pamphlets,

Literature: NON-FICTION PROSE

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