Introduction: Lives Without Theory

Abstract

When biographers are challenged, as they still are, with that old chestnut that their work lacks a grounding in theory, they typically react either with a dismissive shrug or parry the attack and deliver an adroit counter thrust. So, Park Honan remarks that biographers ‘as a rule are not concerned with theory’,² suggesting that they have better things to do in researching their particular subjects; and Barbara Lewalski points out that, ‘Postmodern literary theory, with its emphasis on the instability and undecidability of both texts and history, challenges the fundamental assumptions of biography, which has to ground itself on empiricism, probability, and narrative’,³ suggesting, since she goes on to write a substantial ‘Life’ of Milton, that biographers can sit out the passing squalls of an uncongenial intellectual climate, confident in the solid foundations of their work, and hope that the weather improves. If there is an element of defensiveness in these reactions it is understandable since the emphasis on ‘theory’ in the past fifty years has carried with it the implication that any genre lacking such a grounding is not making a serious contribution to literary studies. Yet, the hollowness of this challenge is exposed if we ask what sort of theory such critics have in mind.

From the mid to late 20th century, it was often noted (regretfully, or happily) that biography ‘has remained notably untheorised’, that it has had ‘a lack of legitimacy in the worlds of contemporary critical theory [and] social historiography’.

(Hermione Lee, Biography: A Very Short Introduction, 2009)¹