LLCU 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: High Culture, Divine Comedy, Semiotics

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Languages, Literatures and Cultures
• Course: LLCU 200
• Professor: Donato Santeramo

Document Summary

Biography: life stories, personal histories, and interpretations thereof. Anecdotes, stories about who a person is. Biography: tend to be more objective, but only to a certain extent - person writing biography will input their idea of the person they"re writing about: can"t be deemed totally objective. Portrait: not only a reproduction of someone"s face, but will often also contain a narrative. Plutarch: parallel lives - one of the first examples of biographies. Became more prevalent in 17th century, either exultations or condemnations of people, usually written/relevant about aristocrats. Biographies of saints/hero/villain: iconography = a narrative is used to justify the greatness of a person: author can either augment or diminish the person they"re writing about. Up to the 1500"s, we only had biographies about aristocrats, famous/important people. 1500"s, we had biographies about artists: the word art/artist comes from artisan. Historical meaning = someone whose job was to paint/sculpture, etc.