A vueltas con la biografía: una aproximación historiográfica

Abstract

Abstract

 The symbiosis between the biographical approach and history is almost as old as the latter. It should come as no surprise, then, that reflections on how to write biographies are prolific today, as they have preoccupied a multitude of professional historians over the last two hundred years. Indeed, even older writers, literati and scholars have been concerned with projecting different aspects of their professional work in biography, although over the years it has been acclimatized to new trends, to the tastes of readers and to the academic world. With the transition to a more analytical historiography after World War II, it seemed that biography, especially political biography, might disappear from the scene. Nothing could be further from the truth if we take into account how the linguistic and cultural turn has, since the 1980s, brought about a new interest on the part of historians interested in cultivating narrative history and those concerned with individuality as a whole. Thus, the aim of the following article is to make a brief historical survey of the ways in which biography or life narratives have been conceived by European historiography. In the introductory part we will cover from its origins until the end of the nineteenth century; in the second, the main, we will explain some changes experienced in the twentieth century and in the third we will focus specifically on Spanish historiography from authors such as Pío Baroja to Isabel Burdiel.

Keywords

Biography, history, politics, Marxism, cultural turn, renewal