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.

HISTORY OF BIOGRAPHY 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.

HISTORY OF BIOGRAPHY 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.

HISTORY OF BIOGRAPHY 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 TERMThe 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 an autobiographical document of its period.

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 ;بابرliterally: "Book of Babur" or "Letters of Babur") which was written between 1493 and 1529.

EARLY AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

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."

EARLY AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

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 WRITINGHistorically, 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 WRITINGAs 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 for communications on paper.

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.

Letters cannot transmit malware.

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, has been in use since the end of the 17th century.

III. BOOK REVIEW

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

IV. LITERARY CRITICISMLiterary 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 PUBLICATIONSScientific 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, and 

working papers issued by individual researchers or research organizations on their own initiative

blogs and science forums