Key features of biography and autobiography chart answer

The word 'biography' is a combination of the Greek words 'bios', which means 'life', and ' graphia', which refers to 'writing'. Simply stated, this means that a biography is a written account of someone else's life. The subject of the biography, that is, the person whose life the biography is describing could be a historical figure, a celebrity, a politician, an athlete or even an ordinary person with a life full of stories worth telling.

A biography is a factual recording of a person's life from their birth to death or the time that the biography is being written. It contains detailed descriptions of the person's childhood, education, relationships, career and any other key touchstone moments that defined that person's life. Hence, a biography is a non-fictiona l form of writing.

Non-fiction : Literature that is based on real-life events and facts, rather than imagination. The first-ever biographies can be traced back to Ancient Greece and Rome, where people celebrated gods as well as notable men by writing about their personalities and life's accomplishments. Plutarch's Parallel Lives , published about 80 A. D, is the earliest ever recorded biographic work written solely about humans.

In this work, Greeks are paired with Romans and are held up against each other and compared, with one being a good example to follow whilst the other's life serves as a cautionary tale. A biography is a written account of a person's life written by someone else.

Examples of biography and autobiography

In this case, the subject, that is, the person the biography is written about is NOT the author or the narrator of the biography. Usually, the author and narrator of a biography, also known as the biographer, is someone who takes a great deal of interest in the subject's life. A biography is usually written in a third-person narrative voice.

This distance from the subject and their experiences allow the biographer to view the subject's experiences in the larger context of their life by comparing them to other experiences or analysing the impact of certain experiences on the subject's personality and life.